The Evolution of Individuality

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In the evolution of complexity, at least to me, one of them should be this weird thing that we all take for granted. The complex domain comes in these packages that we call individuals, agents or organisms. And does it play a role in when we have an immersion description? Well, I think it must, right? Because presumably the origin of those new levels presumably are discovered through some random walk of one kind or another. It's also the case, right, that mutation is macroscopic noise. But you know, this is not this is not noise in an atom, right? This is noise in a macro molecule. In fact, these are actually built, they're constructed dice

Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that there is not universal agreement about what "complexity" actually is. We know it when we see it, perhaps, but there are a number of aspects to the phenomenon, and different researchers will naturally focus on their favorites. Today's guest, David Krakauer, is president of the Santa Fe Institute and a longtime researcher in complexity. He points the finger at the concept of agency. A ball rolling down a hill just mindlessly obeys equations of motion, but a complex system gathers information and uses it to adapt. We talk about what that means and how to think about the current state of complexity science.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/10/242-david-krakauer-on-complexity-agency-and-information/

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David Krakauer received his D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University. He is currently President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously he was at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was the founding director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the Co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation. He was included in Wired magazine's list of "50 People Who Will Change the World."

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