Santa Fe Institute Research Articles

Towards a unified ontology of cybernetics: bridging mechanology and CAS for cooperative societies through thematic synthesis

PurposeThis paper aims to conceptually unite an ontology of cybernetics, bridging living and technical systems, to facilitate future epistemological and theoretical advancements applicable to highly technical societies by crafting a set of definitions that elucidate the nature of the world in which these systems operate.Design/methodology/approachThe research uses a thematic synthesis of two systems/cybernetic traditions: complex adaptive systems and mechanology. The primary sources for this research were the main theses and correlated papers published in the Simondon case for mechanology, and the seminal literature preselected by the Santa Fe Institute for complex adaptive systems.FindingsThe study proposes the following concepts: Individuation: the emergence of new properties in an individual composed of synergistically related parts; Technical evolution: the notion that technical objects evolve into living beings; circular causality: the notion that feedback and feedforward processes shape the organisation and structure of systems and their relationship with the environment; The milieu refers to the part of the environment that has a relationship of co-production, co-dependency, and co-evolution with systems. Metastability is a state that transcends stability and instability and motivates changes in the system. Transduction is the cumulative process of individuation in which systems change structure and organization to maintain operational coherence with their surroundings.Originality/valueThe concepts the paper identifies can serve as a starting point for an extended study on the ontology of cybernetics or as the basis for an evolutionary epistemology both in humans and machines.

Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (IFML): Advancing AI systems that will transform our world

AbstractThe Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (IFML) focuses on core foundational tools to power the next generation of machine learning models. Its research underpins the algorithms and data sets that make generative artificial intelligence (AI) more accurate and reliable. Headquartered at The University of Texas at Austin, IFML researchers collaborate across an ecosystem that spans University of Washington, Stanford, UCLA, Microsoft Research, the Santa Fe Institute, and Wichita State University. Over the past year, we have witnessed incredible breakthroughs in AI on topics that are at the heart of IFML's agenda, such as foundation models, LLMs, fine‐tuning, and diffusion with game‐changing applications influencing almost every area of science and technology. In this article, we seek to highlight seek to highlight the application of foundational machine learning research on key use‐inspired topics: Fairness in Imaging with Deep Learning: designing the correct metrics and algorithms to make deep networks less biased. Deep proteins: using foundational machine learning techniques to advance protein engineering and launch a biomanufacturing revolution. Sounds and Space for Audio‐Visual Learning: building agents capable of audio‐visual navigation in complex 3D environments via new data augmentations. Improving Speed and Robustness of Magnetic Resonance Imaging: using deep learning algorithms to develop fast and robust MRI methods for clinical diagnostic imaging. IFML is also responding to explosive industry demand for an AI‐capable workforce. We have launched an accessible, affordable, and scalable new degree program—the MSAI—that looks to wholly reshape the AI/ML workforce pipeline.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Samuel Bowles of Santa Fe Institute and CORE Econ reviews “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Presents an interpretation of human history that revises long-held assumptions about the emergence of social inequality and hierarchy, considering the implications of this counternarrative for accounts of the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.”

Variational kinetic clustering of complex networks.

Efficiently identifying the most important communities and key transition nodes in weighted and unweighted networks is a prevalent problem in a wide range of disciplines. Here, we focus on the optimal clustering using variational kinetic parameters, linked to Markov processes defined on the underlying networks, namely, the slowest relaxation time and the Kemeny constant. We derive novel relations in terms of mean first passage times for optimizing clustering via the Kemeny constant and show that the optimal clustering boundaries have equal round-trip times to the clusters they separate. We also propose an efficient method that first projects the network nodes onto a 1D reaction coordinate and subsequently performs a variational boundary search using a parallel tempering algorithm, where the variational kinetic parameters act as an energy function to be extremized. We find that maximization of the Kemeny constant is effective in detecting communities, while the slowest relaxation time allows for detection of transition nodes. We demonstrate the validity of our method on several test systems, including synthetic networks generated from the stochastic block model and real world networks (Santa Fe Institute collaboration network, a network of co-purchased political books, and a street network of multiple cities in Luxembourg). Our approach is compared with existing clustering algorithms based on modularity and the robust Perron cluster analysis, and the identified transition nodes are compared with different notions of node centrality.

Inverse Generative Social Science: Backward to the Future.

The agent-based model is the principal scientific instrument of generative social science. Typically, we design completed agents-fully endowed with rules and parameters-to grow macroscopic target patterns from the bottom up. Inverse generative science (iGSS) stands this approach on its head: Rather than handcrafting completed agents to grow a target-the forward problem-we start with the macro-target and evolve micro-agents that generate it, stipulating only primitive agent-rule constituents and permissible combinators. Rather than specific agents as designed inputs, we are interested in agents-indeed, families of agents-as evolved outputs. This is the backward problem and tools from Evolutionary Computing can help us solve it. In this overarching essay of the current JASSS Special Section, Part 1 discusses the motivation for iGSS. Part 2 discusses its goals, as distinct from other approaches. Part 3 discusses how to do it concretely, previewing the five iGSS applications that follow. Part 4 discusses several foundational issues for agent-based modeling and economics. Part 5 proposes a central future application of iGSS: to evolve explicit formal alternatives to the Rational Actor, with Agent_Zero as one possible point of evolutionary departure. Conclusions and future research directions are offered in Part 6. Looking 'backward to the future,' I also include, as Appendices, a pair of 1992 memoranda to the then President of the Santa Fe Institute on the forward (growing artificial societies from the bottom up) and backward (iGSS) problems.

Looking for the Light: Beowulf Sheehan on Photography and Cormac McCarthy

ABSTRACT In this interview, Stacey Peebles talks to Beowulf Sheehan, the preeminent author photographer working today, about his experience photographing writers. In particular, Sheehan describes the 2014 photo session in which he traveled to Santa Fe and photographed Cormac McCarthy, both at the Santa Fe Institute and at McCarthy’s home. The occasion was McCarthy’s forthcoming novel The Passenger—which would not be published, as it turned out, until 2022, and then as two novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris. Sheehan talks about the relationship of text, author, and image; how he approached the exciting challenge of photographing McCarthy; and his own thoughts about McCarthy’s work.

Editor’s Introduction

Eventful times for McCarthy scholars! In the midst of preparations for our June 2022 conference at Trinity College, Dublin, and our September 2022 conference in Savannah, Knopf announced in March that it will publish not one but two new McCarthy novels in October and November 2022—The Passenger and its companion novel, Stella Maris. McCarthy has been working on this project since at least 1980, and its publication has seemed imminent for a long time. (Writing in issue 1.1 of this journal way back in 2001, Dianne Luce mentioned waiting for the “new, New Orleans novel.”) McCarthy had new author photos taken in 2014 in anticipation of the novel’s completion . . . but it took just a little bit longer. And now, in 2022, that novel has become two novels that are finally about to be in the hands of an eager readership.In recognition of this exciting event, this issue of the Cormac McCarthy Journal publishes a number of interviews with and about McCarthy. First, internationally renowned author portrait photographer Beowulf Sheehan talks about the art of capturing images of writers, and what it was like to work with Cormac McCarthy in the summer of 2014 on the grounds of the Santa Fe Institute and in McCarthy’s home. Next, Dianne Luce and Zachary Turpin have gathered together a number of early, obscure interviews that McCarthy gave to Tennessee and Kentucky newspapers between the years of 1968 and 1980—several of these have been unknown even to scholars and disabuse the notion that McCarthy has always been deeply reluctant to grant interviews. Sheehan includes one of his photographs of McCarthy as well as one of himself with the author during their photo session, and many of the short newspaper interviews also ran with photos, some of which are included here.Continuing the issue are articles by Ian Gibson and Heath Wing. Gibson uses information about the composition of the Border Trilogy to illuminate the appearance of uncanny foreknowledge in the texts, and further to explore the supposedly contradictory influences of the scientific and the religious. Wing reads Blood Meridian as an allegory of the politics of sovereign power, focusing particularly on the relationship of the sovereign and his jester-fool. The issue concludes with Craig Warren’s review of the new anthology Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, co-edited by Stacey Peebles and Benjamin West.Finally, a bonus attraction! Lydia Cooper, longtime McCarthy scholar and book review editor of this journal, gives us a few first thoughts on The Passenger and Stella Maris. This issue had already gone to press when advance review copies became available, and so we had a classic “Stop the presses!” moment. As always, Lydia delivers in fine form, and kicks off a new conversation that will certainly be rich and ongoing for years to come. Many thanks to Amanda Urban for helping us secure the review copies.Enjoy, and keep in touch!Stacey Peebleswww.cormacmccarthysociety.com

Hayek at the Santa Fe Institute: Origins, Models, and Organization of the Cradle of Complexity Sciences

Complexity sciences are one of the most mediatized scientific fields of the last 40 years. While this domain has attracted the attention of many philosophers of science, its normative views have not yet been the object of any systematic study. This article is a contribution to the thin social science literature about complexity sciences and proposes a contribution focused on an analysis of the origins, models, and organization of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), cradle of the field. The paper defends the thesis that the notion of “complex adaptive systems” bears a project of naturalization of society through numerical and evolutionary lenses by promoting a Darwinian and capitalist view of the economy. At the same time, such a view has been embodied in the very way of functioning of the institute, which was conceived as an agile organization in a competitive environment and which relies on a fundraising philosophy that tends to commodify science. From a theoretical viewpoint, this text is anchored in the field of Science and Technology Studies and particularly in the coproductionist paradigm, which theorizes the dynamic entanglement of science and society. In terms of empirical sources, the article is based on interviews conducted by the author, and on the SFI's scientific publications as well as institutional archives.

Cormac McCarthy: A Complexity Theory of Literature

Cormac McCarthy: A Complexity Theory of Literature

The ultimate think tank: The rise of the Santa Fe Institute libertarian

Why do corporations and wealthy philanthropists fund the human sciences? Examining the history of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a private research institute founded in the early 1980s, this article shows that funders can find as much value in the social worlds of the sciences they sponsor as in their ideas. SFI became increasingly dependent on funding from corporations and libertarian business leaders in the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, its intellectual work came to focus on the underlying principles of adaptation, innovation, and decentralized coordination supposedly at work in ‘complex systems’ from biological ecosystems to markets and firms. This research cast the ideas of the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek into a new scientific idiom. SFI also became a space where figures in business, media, academia, and politics could come to learn to see the world in a particular way—to acquire the subjectivity of what I call ‘the Santa Fe Institute libertarian’. At SFI, visitors did not simply learn the principles of neo-Hayekian complex system science. They came to see themselves as agents of social evolution, providing the spark that the free-market system needed to produce new technologies and new solutions to social problems without top-down political direction. For the Institute's corporate and libertarian financiers, SFI was not just a space where intellectuals described the world in favored ideological terms, but a space where elite actors became committed to the project of making a new political-economic order.

Some bacteria more than sum of parts

Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels Authors: Brandon H. Schlomann, and Raghuveer Parthasarathy eLife 2021;10:e71105; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.71105 Recommended with a commentary by Srividya Iyer-Biswas, Purdue University and Santa Fe Institute |View Commentary (pdf)| This commentary may be cited as: DOI: 10.36471/JCCM_September_2021_02 https://doi.org/10.36471/JCCM_September_2021_02

Modeling the power of polarization

With assists from politicians and social media, people are increasingly dividing themselves into social and political factions. Models can hint at how it happens—and maybe offer ways to mitigate it. In 2016, when Vicky Chuqiao Yang first started to work on computer simulations of US politics, she was fascinated by the realization that the left–right standoff widely described as “polarization” is not one thing. “There are two kinds of polarization that the media and the public often get confused,” says Yang, an applied mathematician at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. One type is issue polarization: “how much people disagree on policies like ‘What should be the tax rates?’, or ‘What should be the laws to regulate guns?’.” Americans have always been polarized in some ways. But using models, a cadre of researchers is trying to understand why social polarization is on the rise and—perhaps more importantly—what we can do about it. Image credit: Dave Cutler (artist). Those divisions have been widening of late. But they aren’t nearly as incendiary as social or “affective” polarization, which is about anger, distrust, resentment, tribal identity, and mutual loathing (see Fig. 1). As a team of prominent social scientists warned last year, social polarization in conjunction with legislative gridlock and hyper-partisan media have created an “American sectarianism” that threatens democracy itself (1). Researchers are trying to understand why social polarization is on the rise and—perhaps more importantly—what we can do about it. Can we find solutions by focusing on racial anxieties, conspiracy theories, and social media echo chambers that endlessly reinforce a single viewpoint? Or do we also need to look for more fundamental forces at work? These are the kinds of questions that have brought Yang and a host of other modelers into the long-established field of opinion dynamics: the …

Behaviorally and environmentally induced non-24-hour sleep-wake rhythm disorder in sighted patients.

To determine whether there was evidence of circadian or sleep-regulatory dysfunction in sighted individuals with non-24-hour sleep-wake rhythm disorder. Three sighted individuals with signs and/or symptoms of non-24-hour sleep-wake rhythm disorder were studied. Thirty-five- to 332-day laboratory and home-based assessments of sleep-wake and circadian timing, endogenous circadian period, photic input to the circadian pacemaker, and/or circadian and sleep-wake-dependent regulation of sleep were conducted. No evidence of circadian dysfunction was found in these individuals. Instead, sleep-wake timing appeared to dissociate from the circadian timing system, and/or self-selected sleep-wake and associated light/dark timing shifted the circadian pacemaker later, rather than the circadian pacemaker determining sleep-wake timing. These findings suggest that the etiology of this disorder may be light- and/or behaviorally induced in some sighted people, which has implications for the successful treatment of this disorder. Emens JS, St Hilaire MA, Klerman EB, etal. Behaviorally and environmentally induced non-24-hour sleep-wake rhythm disorder in sighted patients. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(2):453-459.

The simulation manifesto: A commentary on Lustick and Tetlock 2021

FUTURES & FORESIGHT SCIENCEVolume 3, Issue 2 e92 COMMENTARIES The simulation manifesto: A commentary on Lustick and Tetlock 2021 Scott E. Page, Corresponding Author Scott E. Page [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0003-2723-5216 University of Michigan–Ross School of Business and Santa Fe Institute, Ann Arbor, MI, USA Correspondence Scott E. Page, University of Michigan–Ross School of Business and Santa Fe Institute, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, and Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Scott E. Page, Corresponding Author Scott E. Page [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0003-2723-5216 University of Michigan–Ross School of Business and Santa Fe Institute, Ann Arbor, MI, USA Correspondence Scott E. Page, University of Michigan–Ross School of Business and Santa Fe Institute, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, and Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 28 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo2.92Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume3, Issue2June 2021e92 RelatedInformation

Cormac McCarthy in Context

Cormac McCarthy in Context

Complexity Sciences

Social scientists have proposed several concepts to give account of the way scientific life organizes. By studying “complexity sciences” – established in the mid-1980s by the “Santa Fe Institute” in New Mexico (USA) –, the present article addresses to interdisciplinary studies and emergent domains literature by proposing a new concept to describe this domain. Drawing from Bourdieusian sociology of science and STS, a “scientific platform” is defined as a meeting point between different specialties, which, on the basis of a flexible common ground, pursue together shared or parallel socio-epistemic objectives. Most of the specialties inscribed in complexity suffer from a relative marginality in their disciplinary field. The term “platform” refers to what the heterogeneous members of the collective mutualize, both in cognitive and social terms, in order to exist and expand.

A breeding pool of ideas: Analyzing interdisciplinary collaborations at the Complex Systems Summer School.

Interdisciplinary research is essential for the study of complex systems, and so there is a growing need to understand the factors that facilitate collaboration across diverse fields of inquiry. In this exploratory study, we examine the composition of self-organized project groups and the structure of collaboration networks at the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School. Using data from all iterations of the summer school from 2005 to 2019, comprising 823 participants and 322 projects, we investigate the factors that contribute to group composition. We first test for homophily with respect to individual-level attributes, finding that group composition is largely consistent with random mixing based on gender, career position, institutional prestige, and country of study. However, we find some evidence of homophilic preference in group composition based on disciplinary background. We then conduct analyses at the level of group projects, finding that project topics from the Social and Behavioral Sciences are over-represented. This could be due to a higher level of baseline interest in, or knowledge of, social and behavioral sciences, or the common application of methods from the natural sciences to problems in the social sciences. Consequently, future research should explore this discrepancy further and examine whether it can be mitigated through policies aimed at making topics in other disciplines more accessible or appealing for collaboration.

The Santa Fe Institute and Econophysics: A Possible Genealogy?

For the last three decades, physicists have been moving beyond the boundaries of their discipline, using their methods to study various problems usually instigated by economists. This trend labeled ‘econophysics’ can be seen as a hybrid area of knowledge that exists between economics and physics. Econophysics did not spring from nowhere—the existing literature agrees that econophysics emerged in the 1990s and historical studies on the field mainly deal with what happened during that decade. This article aims at investigating what happened before the 1990s by clarifying the epistemic background that might have paved the way to the emergence of econophysics. This historical exploration led me to highlight the active role played by the Santa Fe Institute by promoting interdisciplinary research on complexity in 1980s. Precisely, by defining three research themes on economic complexity, the SFI defined a research agenda and a way of extending physics\biology to economics. This article offers a possible archeology of econophysics to clarify what could have contributed to the development of a particular episteme in the 1980s easing the advent of econophysics in the 1990s.

Modern Civilizational Challenges in the Context of the World Reorganization Concepts

The article deals with global forecasting of social development, as well as with the conceptions and possible scenarios for holistic development of mankind. It is justified that contemporary concepts of the world reorganization should consider different dynamics of the country’s civilizational development, its values and traditional culture. The article emphasizes that outlines of processes, oriented towards the formation of a new world order, began to emerge in the 70s of the last century. It is manifested that in modern society, forecasting the future is an integral part of substantiating worldview interpretations of modern phenomena and processes, reflecting optimistic and pessimistic future scenarios, ideals and value perspectives. It is proved that main ideologists and participants in these processes were the Club of Rome, later the Bilderberg Club, the Trilateral Commission, think tanks such as the RAND Corporation, the Santa Fe Institute and others. General principles developed by them were specified in the work of the IMF, the World Bank, WTO, etc. It is defined that since the 1990s, a philosophical-historical and socio-political orientation of a global nature has become a characteristic feature of prognostic concepts. The idea of the „end of history” by F. Fukuyama that validates the post-communist triumph of the liberal-democratic ideas and the onset of historical calm because of liberal democracy victory throughout the geopolitical space. The other one is the „clash of civilizations” idea by S. Huntington, claiming that after the collapse of bipolar world the mankind would face the sharpening of contradictions and the clash of civilizations consolidated around traditional religions. The author concluded that hybrid war, at the epicenter of which Ukraine has been for more than seven years, is not just a local situation, but an element of a new world order that can be defined as a hybrid world order. It is based on a proxy politics technology using information technologies for the collective conscious and collective subconscious systemic manipulations to change person’s or group’s behavior through stimulus, coercion, or conviction. This involves mainly political, economic, informational, institutional, demographic, technical, social, and other resources, rather than military ones. Key words: futurology, global development, civilization, clash of civilizations, information wars, world reorganization, international security, national security.

On Perspectives of the Interdisciplinary Synthesis in Social Sciences at the End of the 20th Century

When in the last two decades of the 20th century new ideas on complexity had started to diffuse in social sciences, the economic thought became a typical area of interdisciplinary research in which the concepts of chaos, nonlinear movement, turbulence, and instability became best to apply. The article looks at how the approach of complexity has been implemented in the Santa Fe interdisciplinary project almost in it’s first ten years between two major workshops on the economy as an evolving complex system. At first it concentrates on general issues of complexity discussed by natural and social scientists in Santa Fe Institute accepting all of them as certain bias for the epistemological breach. Then it turns to the several topics, which problematized the Santa Fe thought in particular and made it unique among the scholars who have adopted the new concepts proposed by complexity science. It also argues that the term of so called “restricted complexity” applied by some epistemologists to characterize a limited score of research topics in Santa Fe is far from being adequate. Although all developments were not equally successful, they did turn out to have enormous resonance in terms of extensive theoretical and practical pertinence and broad areas of application in social sciences even then the complexity approach was challenged by widely spread revision inspired by Niklas Luhmann legacy. Based on a body of work of Brian Arthur and John Holland and their colleagues from Stanford and Massachusetts where complexity has been understood in ways of system behavior, the article presents a complex adaptive system not as the opposite but as a source and confederate of certain order.