The Santa Fe Institute Community Lectures explore the most alluring questions in science and address the issues that matter most to our planet and our species.
Math is often thought of as a discipline of certainty and consistency — of black and white, zeroes and ones. But in reality, mathematics is full of uncertainty and contradiction. In this talk, mathematician and author Jordan Ellenberg discusses how this gray area provides us with powerful tools...
The Information Edge: Creation and Destruction in Life, the Economy, and the Universe SFI’s popular Ulam Lecture Series -- now in its 24th year – features two talks that explore the Information Edge, the principle underlying both the creation and destruction of our universe’s complex...
The Information Edge: Creation and Destruction in Life, the Economy, and the Universe SFI’s popular Ulam Lecture Series -- now in its 24th year – features two talks that explore the Information Edge, the principle underlying both the creation and destruction of our universe’s complex...
How will our future computers, robots and smartphones get the emotional intelligence they need to be truly useful? This talk highlights the adventures behind some of the world's first technologies that recognize human emotion. Researcher and author Rosalind W. Picard will share surprises from her...
The language we speak shapes how we experience life, creating a world view based on its vocabulary and grammar…right? Not so, says John McWhorter. Drawing from the scientific literature, McWhorter explains how this widely-held belief is not only false, it leads to dangerous assumptions about cultures...
It has been more than two years since confirmation of the Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in West Africa. Now, with the end of the outbreak in sight, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from the experience. The global impact of that epidemic, and recent outbreaks of SARS and influenza,...
For nearly half a century, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been more science fiction than science: exciting, possible, but just out of reach. And despite significant advances, "strong AI" in many ways remains elusive. Best-selling author and entrepreneur Gary Marcus provides a cognitive scientist's...
Modern humans are building megacities – and networks of megacities – at an unprecedented scale. Annalee Newitz compares today’s urbanization phenonmenon to that of the Neolithic period roughly 9,000 years ago, when humans first began living in sedentary communities. That shift prompted...
When it comes to human behavior, some traits are neither nature nor nurture, but something altogether different. That “something” is epigenetics, the science that helps to explain how the environment, including some social interactions, alter DNA. In this talk, Dr. Karissa Sanbonmatsu gives...
What shapes our personalities? How do we account for near-death experiences? How do we make decisions? And what happens when we accept that everything we feel and think stems not from an immaterial spirit but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains? Neurophilosopher Churchland grounds the...
For decades, science has told us that biology defines gender differences. But what if the scientists – and popular culture – have got it wrong? Fine explores the literature, from studies in scientific journals to the latest assertions of Mars and Venus author John Gray, to challenge society’s attribution...
2015 Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lecture Series - The Web of Life and the Ecological Human Lecture 2 Traditionally, most ecological research has studied ecosystems as separate from humans. In her second lecture, Dunne shows how humans fit into and impact ecosystems through their myriad interactions...
2015 Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lecture Series - The Web of Life and the Ecological Human Lecture 1 Dunne shares surprising findings from her research of food webs, the networks of who eats whom in nature. After revealing hidden ecological order, she explores the underlying forces that constrain...
Can science prove the existence of God? Is this universe we inhabit the only one? Can a religious experience be scientifically proven? Lightman ponders these timeless, unanswerable questions using his training as both a scientist and a novelist, always careful to include historical and contemporary perspectives....
Why are treatments for chronic disease and addiction so often ineffective? Statistician Susan Murphy believes that generalized treatment approaches simply don’t take into account critical individual differences like patient response, risk, burden, adherence, and preference. By implementing a sequence...
Social networks have proven to be fertile ground for understanding human behavior. This fascinating exploration suggests that we’re much more motivated by social incentives that reward others than by economic self-interest alone. Pentland discusses how studying patterns of information exchange...
The words we use to talk about food offers surprising insights on history, economics, psychology, and even evolution. Daniel Jurafsky explores the relationship between food and language around the globe, from the origins of America’s national condiment as a Chinese fermented fish sauce to the reason...