Aeon: At the limits of thought

What happens when the instruments we use to make rigorous scientific predictions operate in ways that we cannot comprehend with natural cognition? In a recent essay published in Aeon, SFI President David Krakauer takes a philosophical deep dive into this fascinating and pressing question.

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COVID-19 U.S. employment shocks likely larger than Great Depression

The U.S. is likely to see a near-term 24% drop in employment, 17% percent drop in wages, and 22% drop in economic activity as a result of the COVID-19 crisis according to a new study co-authored by SFI External Professor Doyne Farmer at the University of Oxford. These impacts will be very unevenly distributed, with the bottom quarter of earners at risk of a 42% loss in employment and bearing a 30% share of total wage losses. In contrast, the study estimates the top quarter of earners only risk a 7% drop in employment and an 18% share of wage losses.

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What is an individual? Information Theory may provide the answer

Despite the near-universal assumption of individuality in biology, there is little agreement about what individuals are and few rigorous quantitative methods for their identification. A new approach may solve the problem by defining individuals in terms of informational processes.

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STAT: Misinformation is important public health data

In their op-ed for STAT, former SFI postdoctoral fellow Laurent Hébert-Dufresne (University of Vermont) and current postdoc Vicky Chuqiao Yang, Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow and Peters Hurst Scholar, argue that if scientists hope to develop better epidemiological models, they must grasp the complex interplay between social behavior and disease.

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