In his foundational 1972 paper “More Is Different,” physicist Phil Anderson made the case that reducing the objects of scientific study to their smallest components does not allow researchers to predict the behaviors of those systems upon reconstruction. Another way of putting this is that different disciplines reveal different truths at different scales. Contrary to long-held convictions that there would one day be one great unifying theory to explain it all, fundamental research in this century looks more like a bouquet of complementary approaches. This pluralistic thinking hearkens back to the work of 19th century psychologist William James and looks forward into the growing popularity of evidence-based approaches that cultivate diversity in team-building, governance, and ecological systems. Context-dependent theory and practice calls for choirs of voices…so how do we encourage this? New systems must emerge to handle the complexity of digital society…what might they look like?

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 dip back into our sub-series on SFI’s Emergent Political Economies research theme with a trialogue featuring Microsoft Research Lead Glen Weyl (founder of RadicalXChange and founder-chair of The Plurality Institute), and SFI Resident Professor Cristopher Moore (author of over 150 papers at the intersection of physics and computer science). In our conversation we discuss the case for a radically pluralistic approach, explore the links between plurality and quantum mechanics, and outline potential technological solutions to the “sense-making” problems of the 21st century.

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.

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Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

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Referenced & Related Works

Why I Am A Pluralist
by Glen Weyl

Reflecting on A Possible Quadratic Wormhole between Quantum Mechanics and Plurality
by Michael Freedman, Michal Fabinger, Glen Weyl

Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul
by Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver, Vitalik Buterin

AI is an Ideology, Not a Technology
by Glen Weyl & Jaron Lanier

How Civic Technology Can Help Stop a Pandemic
by Jaron Lanier & Glen Weyl

A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods
by Vitalik Buterin, Zöe Hitzig, Glen Weyl

Equality of Power and Fair Public Decision-making
by Nicole Immorlica, Benjamin Plautt, Glen Weyl

Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolution
by Jaeweon Shin, Michael Holton Price, David Wolpert, Hajime Shimao, Brendan Tracey & Timothy Kohler 

Toward a Connected Society
by Danielle Allen

The role of directionality, heterogeneity and correlations in epidemic risk and spread
by Antoine Allard, Cris Moore, Samuel Scarpino, Benjamin Althouse, and Laurent Hébert-Dufresne

The Generals’ Scuttlebutt: Byzantine-Resilient Gossip Protocols
by Sandro Coretti, Aggelos Kiayias, Cristopher Moore, Alexander Russell

Effective Resistance for Pandemics: Mobility Network Sparsification for High-Fidelity Epidemic Simulation
by Alexander Mercier, Samuel Scarpino, and Cris Moore

How Accurate are Rebuttable Presumptions of Pretrial Dangerousness? A Natural Experiment from New Mexico
by Cris Moore, Elise Ferguson, Paul Guerin

The Uncertainty Principle: In an age of profound disagreements, mathematics shows us how to pursue truth together
by Cris Moore & John Kaag

On Becoming Aware: A pragmatics of experiencing
by Nathalie Depraz, Francisco Varela, and Pierre Vermersch

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform The World
by David Deutsch

[Twitter thread on chess]
by Vitalik Buterin

Letter from Birmingham Jail
by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The End of History and The Last Man
by Francis Fukuyama

Enabling the Individual: Simmel, Dewey and “The Need for a Philosophy of Education”
by H. Koenig

Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti of The Holy Father Francis on Fraternity and Social Friendship
by Pope Francis

What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?
by David Wolpert

J.C.R. Licklider (1, 2)

Allison Duettman (re: existential hope)

Evan Miyazono (re: Protocol Labs research)

Intangible Capital (“an open access scientific journal that publishes theoretical or empirical peer-reviewed articles, which contribute to advance the understanding of phenomena related with all aspects of management and organizational behavior, approached from the perspectives of intellectual capital, strategic management, human resource management, applied psychology, education, IT, supply chain management, accounting…”)

Polis (“a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning”)

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68 - W. Brian Arthur on Economics in Nouns and Verbs (Part 1)

69 - W. Brian Arthur (Part 2) on "Prim Dreams of Order vs. Messy Vitality" in Economics, Math, and Physics

82 - David Krakauer on Emergent Political Economies and A Science of Possibility (EPE 01)

83 - Eric Beinhocker & Diane Coyle on Rethinking Economics for A Sustainable & Prosperous World (EPE 02)

84 - Ricardo Hausmann & J. Doyne Farmer on Evolving Technologies & Market Ecologies (EPE 03)

91 - Steven Teles & Rajiv Sethi on Jailbreaking The Captured Economy (EPE 04)