What does it mean to think? What are the traits of thinking systems that we could use to identify them? Different environmental variables call for different strategies in individual and collective cognition — what defines the threshold at which so-called “solid” brains transition into “liquids”? And how might we apply these and related lessons from ecology and evolution to help steward a diverse and thriving future with technology, and keep the biosphere afloat?

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.

This week on the show we talk to SFI External Professor Ricard Solé of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Website, Twitter, Google Scholar) about liquid and solid brains, the scaling of cognition, criticality, contagions, and terraforming our own planet with synthetic bio.

Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us, including our upcoming program for Undergraduate Complexity Research, our new SFI Press book Ex Machina by John H. Miller, and an open postdoctoral fellowship in Belief Dynamics — at santafe.edu/engage.

Lastly, join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more. Space is limited! Apps close February 1st. Learn more on our website.

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Referenced & Related Works

Liquid and Solid Brains: Mapping the Cognition Space
SFI Seminar by Ricard Solé

John Hopfield (re: biology as computation)

Synthetic transitions: towards a new synthesis
by Ricard Solé

Complexity 93 - Kate Adamala on Synthetic Biology, Origins of Life, and Bioethics

The Multiple Paths to Multiple Life
by Chris Kempes and David Krakauer

Simon Conway Morris (re: macroevolutionary trends)

Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolution
by Jaewon Shin et al.

Smarter Parts Make Collective Systems Too Stubborn
by Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta Magazine

Complexity 90 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human Dataome

Will Ratcliff (re: yeasts and emergent multi-cellularity)

Complexity 29 - On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 3)

Synthetic criticality in cellular brains
by Ricard Solé et al.

Tom Ray (re: artificial life)

Complexity and fragility in ecological networks
by Ricard Solé and José Montoya

Ecological Networks and Their Fragility
by José Montoya, Stuart Pimm, and Ricard Solé

The small world of human language
by Ramon Ferrer i Cancho and Ricard Solé

Macroscopic patterns of interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcement
by Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Sam Scarpino, and Jean-Gabriel Young

Complexity 56 - J. Doyne Farmer on The Complexity Economics Revolution

Complexity 66 - Katherine Collins on Better Investing Through Biomimicry

Chris Langton (re: criticality)

Jim Crutchfield (re: the edge of chaos)

Per Bak (re: self-organized criticality)

Complexity 10 - Melanie Moses on Metabolic Scaling in Biology & Computation

Complexity 3 - Sabine Hauert on Swarming Across Scales

Niles Eldredge (re: punctuated equilibria)

Terraforming the biosphere: can bioengineering save us?
SFI Seminar by Ricard Solé

Ecological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 years
by Ricard Solé and Simon Levin

Ecological firewalls for synthetic biology
by Blai Vidiella and Ricard Solé

Rachel Armstrong (re: synthetic biology for CO2 fixing in concrete)

Stewardship of global collective behavior
by Joseph Bak-Coleman et al.

Complexity 64 - Reconstructing Ancient Superhighways with Stefani Crabtree and Devin White

Complexity 5 - Jennifer Dunne on Food Webs & ArchaeoEcology

Vault #24 - 50 Ways to Use Technology Enhanced Learning in the Classroom