Carlos Gershenson on Balance, Criticality, Antifragility, and The Philosophy of Complex Systems
COMPLEXITY
The Law of Prerequisite Variety
An entrenched culture in an organization can be very difficult to change as new measures are actively or passively resisted. Ashby, who was a British silver, a mathematician from the middle of the 20th century, one of his contributions was a law of requisite variety. And it's not trivial to either increase the variety of disorganizations or decrease the variety of that which they are trying to control.
How do we get a handle on complex systems thinking? What are the implications of this science for philosophy, and where does philosophical tradition foreshadow findings from the scientific frontier?
Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.
In this episode we speak with Carlos Gershenson (UNAM website, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, Twitter), SFI Sabbatical Visitor and professor of computer science at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he leads the Self-organizing Systems Lab, among many other titles you can find in our show notes. For the next hour, we’ll discuss his decades of research and writing on a vast array of core complex systems concepts and their intersections with both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions — a first for this podcast.
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Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.
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Carlos publishes the Complexity Digest Newsletter.
His SFI Seminars to date:
A Brief History of Balance
Emergence, (Self)Organization, and Complexity
Criticality: A Balance Between Robustness and Adaptability
Festina lente (the slower-is-faster effect)
Antifragility: Dynamical Balance
W. Ross Ashby & The Law of Requisite Variety
Hyperobjects
by Timothy Morton
How can we think the complex?
by Carlos Gershenson and Francis Heylighen
The Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophy
by Carlos Gershenson
Complexity and Philosophy
by Francis Heylighen, Paul Cilliers, Carlos Gershenson
Heterogeneity extends criticality
by Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, Octavio Zapata, Omar K, Pineda, Gerardo Iñiguez, and Carlos Gershenson
When Can we Call a System Self-organizing?
by Carlos Gershenson and Francis Heylighen
Temporal, Structural, and Functional Heterogeneities Extend Criticality and Antifragility in Random Boolean Networks
by Amahury Jafet López-Díaz, Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, and Carlos Gershenson
When slower is faster
by Carlos Gershenson, Dirk Helbing
Self-organization leads to supraoptimal performance in public transportation systems
by Carlos Gershenson
Dynamics of ranking
by Gerardo Iñiguez, Carlos Pineda, Carlos Gershenson, & Albert-László Barabási
Self-Organizing Traffic Lights
by Carlos Gershenson
Dynamic competition and resource partitioning during the early life of two widespread, abundant and ecologically similar fishes
by A. D. Nunn, L. H. Vickers, K. Mazik, J. D. Bolland, G. Peirson, S. N. Axford, A. Henshaw & I. G. Cowx
Towards a general theory of balance
by Carlos Gershenson
A Calculus for Self-Reference
by Francisco Varela
On Some Mental Effects of The Earthquake
by William James
Self-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systems
by Carlos Gershenson
Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I.
Complexity Ep. 99
Simon DeDeo on Good Explanations & Diseases of Epistemology
Complexity Ep. 72
David Wolpert on The No Free Lunch Theorems and Why They Undermine The Scientific Method
Complexity Ep. 45
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility
by Stewart Brand
Does Free Will Violate The Laws of Physics?
Big Think interviews Sean Carroll
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