#11 – Stefan Thurner: The Scaling of Everything

My guest is Stefan Thurner, A Professor of theoretical physics, and the President of the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. Stefan has published over 240 scientific articles and he was elected Austrian Scientist of the Year 2017. He is also an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

In our conversation, we first delve into the scaling laws of everything. We explore social, financial, biological, and economic dynamics—for example, how to make the economy more resilient by targeting some unique companies, how social bubbles form, the strength of networks of friends and foes in social contexts, and how the methodology of physics can help us understand other fields, etc. I hope you enjoy our discussion.

Find me on X at @⁠⁠⁠⁠ProfSchrepel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Also, be sure to subscribe.

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References:

➝ Measuring social dynamics in a massive multiplayer online game (2010)

➝ How women organize social networks different from men (2013)

➝ Multirelational Organization of Large-Scale Social Networks in an Online World (2010)

➝ What is the minimal systemic risk in financial exposure networks? (2020)

➝ Scaling laws and persistence in human brain activity (2003)

➝ New Forms of Collaboration Between the Social and Natural Sciences Could Become Necessary for Understanding Rapid Collective (2024)

➝ Quantifying firm‐level economic systemic risk from nation‐wide supply networks (2022)

➝ Fitting Power-laws in Empirical Data with Estimators that Work for All Exponents (2017)

➝ Complex Systems: Physics Beyond Physics (2017)

➝ Systemic Financial Risk: Agent-based Models to Understand the Leverage Cycle on National Scales and its Consequences (2011)

➝ Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average (2010)