In memoriam: Herb Gintis

Herb Gintis, who drew on a variety of disciplines to study human society, passed away on January 5, 2023, in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the age of 82. He had been an SFI External Professor since 2001 and was a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he taught since 1974.

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New Journal: Collective Intelligence

Collective Intelligence, a new online open-source journal, launched its inaugural issue this past fall. The editors hope the journal will help stimulate the discovery of the fundamental principles that underlie collective intelligence

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New Short Course & Symposium to explore first principles of collective intelligence

SFI will host a three-day Collective Intelligence Symposium & Short Course on June 20–23, 2023, focusing on foundational ideas like first principles to help establish a rigorous approach to the study of collective intelligence. The event will also leap into unexplored possibilities through a Radical Ideas competition. Applications are required for all participants, and the priority deadline is February 1, 2023.

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SFI Press publishes "Ex Machina: Coevolving Machines & the Origins of the Social Universe”

If we could rewind the tape of the Earth’s deep history back to the beginning and start the world anew — would social behavior arise yet again? In “Ex Machina,” John H. Miller introduces a methodology for exploring systems of adaptive, interacting, choice-making agents. Miller combines ideas from biology, computation, game theory, and the social sciences to simulate the evolution of social behavior.

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Kyle Harper joins SFI's Fractal Faculty

Kyle Harper, a Roman Historian at the University of Oklahoma, uses the natural sciences to reshape his field. Harper joined SFI as a member of the Fractal Faculty in the fall of 2022.

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Study: Why are sustainable practices often elusive?

For at least 200,000 years, humans have been trying to understand their environments and adapt to them. At times, we have succeeded; often, we have not. In a new study, SFI's Stefani Crabtree, Jennifer Dunne, and others analyze how information flows from ecosystems to the societies inhabiting them.

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In memoriam: Charles ‘Chuck’ Stevens

Charles Stevens, a preeminent neurobiologist who revealed fundamental architectures in the brain and whose experimental techniques paved the way for decades of molecular neuroscience, passed away on October 21, 2022, in San Diego, CA. At the time of his passing Stevens, 88, was a distinguished professor emeritus at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and a fellow of the Santa Fe Institute’s Science Board and External Faculty.

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Cormac and SFI: an abiding friendship

In anticipation of Cormac McCarthy’s newest books, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris” (Knopf, 2022), former SFI Miller Scholar Laurence Gonzales recollects McCarthy’s long and ongoing friendship with SFI.

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Study: new model for the transmission of cultural knowledge

In a new study, published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, SFI's Simon DeDeo and Helena Miton describe a new model for understanding the transmission of tacit knowledge – that kind of working knowledge that is passed down with very limited specification. 

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SFI welcomes Program Postdoctoral Fellow James Holehouse

How do the regulatory systems of governments change as they grow? Do bigger governments require more or fewer bureaucrats per capita? Are more efficient bureaucracies possible? Program Postdoctoral Fellow James Holehouse is fascinated by how complex systems, from governments to cells, change over time. 

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Advancing science with machine learning

At the crossroads of computer science and computational science, the emerging field of scientific machine learning focuses on harnessing new ideas in machine learning together with predictive physics-based models to solve complex, real-world problems. On October 10–12, a group met to collaborate on new ideas about using scientific machine learning in complex fields.

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SFI welcomes Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Pedro Márquez-Zacarías

In biology, hierarchies are everywhere, from Linnaean taxonomy — the system we use to classify living things — to the social organization within a pod of gorillas. Biological hierarchies are often explained by the Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET) framework, which holds that evolutionary processes gave rise to life’s hierarchies. But this framework has some missing pieces, Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Pedro Márquez-Zacarías suggests.

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Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis named Citation Laureates

SFI Professor Sam Bowles and External Professor Herb Gintis have been selected as 2022 Citation Laureates by Clarivate "for providing evidence and models that broaden our understanding of economic behavior to include not only self-interest but also reciprocity, altruism, and other forms of social cooperation.”

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