Physicist Geoffrey West discusses metabolic scaling laws in nature and their application to human societies. The conversation explores Kleiber's law, city growth patterns, social metabolism, and the need for aligning communities with energy realities. West reflects on sustainability, urban planning, and the interconnectedness of societal structures and nature.

In this episode, we explore Sam’s conversations about the phenomenon of death. We begin with an introduction from Sam as he urges us to use our awareness of death to become more present in our day-to-day lives. We then hear a conversation between Sam and Frank Ostaseski, founder of the Zen Hospice Project, who shares the valuable lessons he has learned through caring for those in their very last days. Next, we move on to a conversation with Scott Barry Kaufman, who explains what it means to pursue a good life by putting a modern spin on Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. Researcher and professor of neuroscience Roland Griffiths then details his findings on psychedelic therapies. He and Sam discuss the inexplicable powers of psychedelics in easing the anxiety around death, and how these experiences can potentially help us live fuller lives. Shifting perspectives, we move on by hearing NYU professor Scott Galloway explain the social and economic impacts of a society made painfully aware of death by the COVID-19 pandemic. We then listen in to author Oliver Burkeman as he outlines how the knowledge of our mortality can inform practical time management techniques before addressing an age-old question with physicist Geoffrey West: Theoretically, could we engineer humans to live forever? Sam closes this episode with a solo talk, explaining that we needn’t be cynical about the fact that all life must come to an end. Instead, it is the transient nature of life that might be the very thing which makes it beautiful in the first place.   About the Series Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam Harris, a new series of audio documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career. Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.  

If you scale up an animal to twice its height, keeping everything else proportionate, its volume and weight become eight times as much. Such a scaling relation was used by J.B.S. Haldane in his famous essay, "On Being the Right Size," to help explain certain features of living organisms. But scaling relations go much deeper than that, and they are often much more subtle than the volume going as the cube of the length. Geoffrey West is a particle physicist turned complexity theorist, who studies how features from metabolism to lifespan change as we adjust the size of an organism -- or of other complex systems, from cities to computer networks. His insights have important implications for innovation, sustainability, and the best ways to organize life here on Earth. [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/geoffrey-west.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true" social_email="true" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Geoffrey West received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he served as President from 2005 to 2009. He has been listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. He is the author of Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies. Home page Wikipedia page Amazon page TED talk on "The Surprising Math of Cities and Corporations" Google Scholar publications Download Episode See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Physics of Life podcast explores the interdisciplinary nature of physics and life. Guests delve into topics like the limits of the brain, compression in complexity science, energy budgets in the brain, dynamics of living systems, scaling laws in organisms, and the hidden order in nature.

If you’re honest with yourself, you’re likely asking of the last two years: What happened? The COVID-19 pandemic is a prism through which our stories and predictions have refracted…or perhaps it’s a kaleidoscope, through which we can infer relationships and causes, but the pieces all keep shifting. One way to think about humankind’s response to COVID is as a collision between predictive power and understanding, highlighting how far the evolution of our comprehension has trailed behind the evolution of our tools. Another way of looking at it is in terms of bottlenecks and reservoirs — whether it’s N95 mask distribution, log-jammed shipping lanes, or everybody looking up to Tony Fauci, superspreader events or narrative rupture, COVID is a global crash course in how things flow through networks. Ultimately, the effects go even deeper: How has COVID changed our understanding of individuality — the self and its relationship to other selves?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 special year-end wrap-up episode, we speak with  SFI President David Krakauer and former SFI President and Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West about The Complex Alternative, a new SFI Press volume gathering the perspectives of over 60 members of the complex systems research community on COVID-19 — not just the disease but the webbed and embedded systems it revealed.Complexity Podcast will take a winter hiatus over the holidays and return on Wednesday, January 12th. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/give. Please also be aware that PhD students are now welcome to apply for our tuitionless (!) Summer 2022 SFI GAINS residential program in Vienna, Austria. Learn more at santafe.edu/gains.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInRelated Reading & Listening:The Complex Alternative: Complexity Scientists on the COVID-19 PandemicSelected contributions from that volume:David Kinney - Why We Can’t Depoliticize A PandemicSimon DeDeo - From Virus To SymptomOn Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 3)Bill Miller on Investment Strategies in Times of CrisisCristopher Moore on the heavy tail of outbreaksSidney Redner on exponential growth processesAnthony Eagan - The COVID-19-Induced Explosion of Boutique NarrativesCarrie Cowan on the future of educationMelanie Mitchell - The Double-Edged Sword of Imperfect MetaphorsDanielle Allen, E. Glen Weyl, and Rajiv Sethi - Prediction and Policy in a Complex SystemAdditional Media:John Kaag - What Thoreau can teach us about the Great ResignationKyle Harper - The Fall of the Roman Empire (SFI Talk)Niall Ferguson’s Networld, Part 1 “Disruption” feat. Geoffrey WestNeal Stephenson, SFI Miller ScholarThe Limits of Human Scale - David Pakman interviews Geoffrey WestSamuel Bowles, Wendy Carlin - The coming battle for the COVID-19 narrativeJonathan Rausch - The Constitution of KnowledgeLaurent Hébert-Dufresne on Halting the Spread of COVID-19Sam Scarpino on Modeling Disease Transmission & InterventionsScaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)Geoffrey West on Scaling, Open-Ended Growth, and Accelerating Crisis/Innovation Cycles: Transcendence or Collapse? (Part 2)New Directions in Science Emerge from Disconnection and Discordby Yiling Lin, James Allen Evans, Lingfei WuScaling of Urban Income Inequality in the United Statesby Elisa Heinrich Mora, Jacob J. Jackson, Cate Heine, Geoffrey B. West, Vicky Chuqiao Yang, Christopher P. Kempes

Scale by Geoffrey West focuses on the the principles and patterns connecting the ways that cities, organisms, and companies grow. West, a theoretical physicist, studied the way in which sizes of mammals related to their life expectancy, and further connected these laws to the growth and longevity of cities and the world of business. Nat and Neil unpack these laws and principles on today's podcast episode. We cover a wide range of topics including: The idea of '1 billion heartbeats' per lifetime How COVID has impacted growth of cities and business Human life expectancy Paradigm shifting innovations Growth in its relation to socioeconomic factors And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Scale by Geoffrey West! Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Readwise (0:02) Antilibrary (Umberto Eco) (4:41) Evernote (1:07) Notion (1:07) Roam (1:07) Airr (8:58) Of Mice and Elephants: A Matter of Scale (21:08) Steve Jobs introduces WiFi…with a hula hoop! (48:43) Books mentioned Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott (7:36) (Nat’s Book Notes) Antifragile (7:40) (Nat’s Book Notes) (Book Episode) The Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin (8:48) The Startup Gold Mine (Neil Soni) (13:05) Scale by Geoffrey West (14:08) (Nat’s Book Notes) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett (27:08) (Nat’s Book Notes) (Book Episode) The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (30:05) (Nat’s Book Notes) (Book Episode) The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (35:31) (Nat’s Book Notes) Happy Accidents by Morton Meyers (59:02) (Nat’s Book Notes) (Book Episode) In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1:17:44) (Nat’s Book Notes) (Book Episode)   People Mentioned Umberto Eco (4:41) Dan Carlin (8:48) Geoffrey West (14:08) David Deutsch (27:03) Daniel Dennett (27:08) Arthur Clarke (50:14) Nassim Taleb (1:29:30) Show notes: 0:27 - Using Readwise to gather your notes to export to other sites. Scanning book pages of physical books. Nat and Neil discuss their preferences surrounding digital vs. physical books. 6:32 - Re-reading books. The difficulty of finding a ‘mind-blowing’ book to read. If you have any book recommendations for a future podcast episode, send them our way! 8:45 - Airr - Highlight audio as you listen to podcasts. How to make podcast listening more educational for yourself. Purposes of podcasts can be both educational and entertaining. The massive market for “How To” content. 14:08 - This week’s episode is on the book Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies by Geoffrey West. The book talks about how things grow, continue to grow, decline in growth, or decay. The author primarily focuses on growth of organisms, cities, and companies, as the book title suggests, but also within these large structures are smaller substructures that grow and change, too. Some of the same laws of growth apply in seemingly different systems. 20:31 - There are many things that scale along with size that are not growing at a 1:1 ratio. The number of heartbeats in a specific mammal’s life is roughly the same across species. Neil describes an article in which each species receives an average of 1 billion heartbeats per lifetime. The heart rate varies on size of the being. Different lifespans between species. From an objective standpoint, an elephant tends to live longer than a mouse, but subjectively, do life spans feel the same length to each individual creature? 23:45 - How humans fit into this research of lifespan vs. body size. Differences in lifespan pre-technology vs. today’s era. Life extension - whether or not the maximum life expectancy can be extended. The age of 125 seems to be the maximum at this point according to West. 28:02 - Entropy and natural decay in the cell’s ability to replicate. You can bring things from disordered back to ordered, and with that creates externalities. Example: the waste created when we use the bathroom. Are there ways to minimize that?   30:46 - “The problem is that the theory also predicts that unbounded growth cannot be sustained without having either infinite resources or inducing major paradigm shifts that reset the clock before potential collapse occurs. We have sustained open-ended growth and avoided collapse by invoking continuous cycles of paradigm shifting innovations, such as those associated on the big scale of human history with discoveries of iron, steam, coal, computation, and most recently digital information technology.” (pg. 31) This quote is talking about finite-time singularity. This leads into a discussion in paradigm shifting innovations in today’s world. Resetting the paradigm clock. 35:45 - The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin - One thing brought up in this book is that humans, technologically, are an exponentially developing species. Geoffrey West brings up the possibility of hitting a wall and running out of paradigm shifts. To continue growing at an exponential rate, do we have to keep discovering this innovations at an exponential rate? 37:12 - Growth and the way society is structured. A shrink in population would pose the issue of how a generation smaller in numbers would have to be paying Social Security for the generation above them. Continued growth is ‘built-in’ to the system, and if it doesn’t grow at the anticipated rate, a collapse is possible. 41:09 - Across different cultures and countries comes different values: community, family, the state, society, tradition, religion. In America, it’s perceived that one’s self is the most valued, also referred to as individualism. 45:06 - The release of new inventions and technology in the ‘80s and ‘90s: computers, digital cameras, cell phones, and laptops. From big, clunky, and colorless inventions to high-speed and attractive new pieces of technology. It becomes interesting to think about how unique and magical these inventions feel at the time they come out, and also how quickly the next piece of upgraded technology follows. 52:11 - There are products that improve and add more features at a higher rate, and products where that growth is not as rapid. As noted in the book, these paradigm shifts happen, there’s a massive spike, and new innovations slowly come from that spike. The spike jump starts the innovations, and the innovations slow until there’s another spike. 54:26 - Discussions over whether COVID will bring a new spike. There have been many changes in our society with the way we work, make money, education, etc. that it poses the question on what will follow. Making use of underutilized resources. It comes down to what is more efficient. 56:34 - Intellectual capital has been opened up in a new way since COVID, as we are no longer expected to be in the same place. The downfall of Silicon Valley between COVID, remote work, and being on literal fire. With people working remotely now more than ever, it seems to point us in the direction of growth in the digital space and information innovation. 1:00:07 - How these changes in the way we live and work will affect the scaling laws discussed in the book. Urbanization in the U.S. People moving out of big cities. Changes in the way companies and their employees are now working. 1:06:05 - Companies and their current policies: remote, in-person, or a mixture of both. Depends on the needs and what industry they are in. Coworking spaces and working remotely around people, without actually working with them. 1:10:10 - Human’s ability to regulate their internal body temperature. West brings up global warming, and how an increase of 2 degrees Celsius could increase the pace of all biological lives by 20-30% - living and dying faster. Inversely, if you could lower your own body temperature by 1 degree Celsius, you could enhance your life span by 10-15%. 1:14:32 - Growth of cities and its relation with socioeconomic factors: wages, innovation, crime, pollution, etc. “The multiplicative compounding of socioeconomic interactivity engendered by urbanization has inevitably led to the contraction of time. Rather than being bored to death, our actual challenge is to avoid anxiety attacks, psychotic breakdowns, heart attacks, and strokes resulting from being accelerated to death.” (pg. 332) 1:20:03 - Population size in cities and productively interacting with others - discussions on whether innovations can come from a city that stays stagnant or even decreases in size. Commute times and the ‘one hour’ rule. 1:25:03 - Shared ideologies from across the world without a way to bring those people together. Sense of community from these shared interests and ideas, even if there is no physical meeting place for all to share. 1:29:58 - The next book we will be reading and discussing is Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil. Feel free to pick up a copy of the book to read along with us before the next podcast episode! If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a review on iTunes. As always, let us know if you have any book recommendations! Find us on Twitter @TheRealNeilS and @nateliason. The best way to stay up to date on future episodes and show updates is to join our email list at Made You Think Podcast. Check out ways you can support the show here!

Geoffrey West discusses biological scaling applied to human economies, questioning if we can create paths to less resource consumption or if we are bound by nature's laws. They explore population growth, energy use, societal metabolism change, decentralization impacts, weight loss drugs, chemicals on metabolism, and decision-making for future generations.

Geoffrey West dives into the universal laws of growth, innovation, and sustainability across biology, cities, economies, and companies. Discusses scaling laws affecting heartbeats, city rhythms, and corporate lifespans. Explores how cell phone data uncovers city insights and network analysis, along with challenges in mapping growth patterns within companies. Reveals the evolution of metaphors into substantial frameworks bridging physics, biology, and economics.

Join Geoffrey West, Stuart Kauffman, V.S. Ramachandran, Antonio Damasio, and Michio Kaku as they discuss the fascinating world of scientific breakthroughs in biology. From complex adaptive systems to the debate between reductionism and holism, explore the dual nature of scientific understanding and the potential of molecular replicators in shaping the future of biology.

Physicist Geoffrey West discusses scaling laws in living organisms, cities, businesses, and technologies. Topics include power laws in mammal heartbeats, patents and crime in cities, technology scaling, and innovation. The conversation also dives into super-linearity in cities and companies, historical impacts on tech giants, and the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to understand scaling dynamics.