The robustness of these systems is this almost this tug of war between the need for structure and feedback. It's essentially the noise, which we probably would think of as a bad thing if you're not in the complexity space,. That's providing the variation you need for the system to adapt. Carolina: Although the noise seems like a bug, it is required both to generate the structure in the first place.
In our last episode with Tyler Marghetis, we learnt about how a complex system can tip from one state into another. But what happens when systems don't tip or fail? What makes a system robust?
In today's episode, we're talking with Karoline Wiesner, a Professor of Complexity Science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam, Germany. She breaks down the characteristics of a robust system, through the context of an incredibly robust complex system — the ant colony.
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