Living computation as a statistical physics problem
This week at SFI, a multidisciplinary group of experts is gathered at SFI to work toward a quantitative science of how living things process energy and information to solve problems.
The latest news and events at the Santa Fe Institute
This week at SFI, a multidisciplinary group of experts is gathered at SFI to work toward a quantitative science of how living things process energy and information to solve problems.
A new research program at SFI looks at laws as operating systems for human societies.
During an October 18 SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, mathematician Jordan Ellenberg explored how math can help us think about the seemingly uncertain matters that dominate our lives. Watch his talk here.
Class Central, a site that collects information and reviews on thousands of online courses from around the world, recently ranked SFI’s “Introduction to Complexity” online course highest among 614 other online science courses.
In two lectures, Seth Lloyd explores what happens when one system gains an advantage in collecting and processing information – an advantage he believes underlies all creation and destruction in our universe. Watch his lectures here.
A team of ecologists met at SFI recently to begin synthesizing an efficient theory that aims toward a more unified understanding of ecology.
In Nautilus, SFI President David Krakauer takes a critical look at artificial intelligence in light of humanity's long tradition of using tools to augment cognition — and our more recent, perhaps darker tendency to let them do the thinking for us.
During an SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, Rosalind Picard reveals some of the surprises she has discovered at the intersection of human emotion and wearable tech. Watch her talk here.
Whether it’s walking across hot coals or simply going to church on Sunday, people who participate in regular religious acts send a clear signal to others that they’re ready and willing to contribute to their communities, a new study suggests.
Today, three researchers introduce a new method that reveals interesting and sometime surprising structures in networks, from power grids to the internet, at the micro, macro, and in-between scales.
Most US drivers could perform their daily personal vehicle trips with an electric vehicle, according to a new model by SFI External Professor Jessika Trancik and colleagues.
Drawing from network science, decision-making tools with artificial intelligence, and social influence theories, experts gathered at SFI recently to explore new ways to spark large-scale social change.
To prepare for climate change, urbanization, or antibiotic resistance, we need to know how the microbial world we are immersed in will respond to stress. A recent SFI meeting sought progress.
A new network model shows that replacing infected front-line workers with healthy ones can actually accelerate the spread of certain infections.
Stephanie Forrest and Melanie Mitchell recount the legacy of John Holland, a complexity science pioneer who passed away in August 2015.
On the popular podcast "Waking Up with Sam Harris," SFI President David Krakauer weighs in on whether your brain is an information processor. It is, he says, because it converts disorder to order.
New research by SFI Omidyar Fellow Andrew Berdahl and collaborators reveals that populations relying on group navigation, such as migrating birds and salmon, could be vulnerable to sudden collapse.
New research suggests that larger crowds do not always produce wiser decisions. Moderately-sized crowds are likely to outperform larger ones when faced with combinations of easy and difficult qualitative decisions.
In a recent paper in the Journal of Network and Computer Applications, SFI Postdoc Justin Grana and his collaborators call on game theory to suggest a better way to stop cyber attackers.
Watch linguist John McWhorter deliver a community lecture in which he rethinks the widely-held belief that the language we speak shapes how we experience life.