Ricard Solé on Liquid and Solid Brains and Terraforming The Biosphere
What does it mean to think? What are the traits of thinking systems that we could use to identify them? Different environmental variables call for different strategies in individual and collective cognition — what defines the threshold at which so-called “solid” brains transition into “liquids”? And how might we apply these and related lessons from ecology and evolution to help steward a diverse and thriving future with technology, and keep the biosphere afloat?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on the show we talk to SFI External Professor Ricard Solé of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Website, Twitter, Google Scholar) about liquid and solid brains, the scaling of cognition, criticality, contagions, and terraforming our own planet with synthetic bio.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us, including our upcoming program for Undergraduate Complexity Research, our new SFI Press book Ex Machina by John H. Miller, and an open postdoctoral fellowship in Belief Dynamics — at santafe.edu/engage.Lastly, join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more. Space is limited! Apps close February 1st. Learn more on our website.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced & Related WorksLiquid and Solid Brains: Mapping the Cognition SpaceSFI Seminar by Ricard SoléJohn Hopfield (re: biology as computation)Synthetic transitions: towards a new synthesisby Ricard SoléComplexity 93 - Kate Adamala on Synthetic Biology, Origins of Life, and BioethicsThe Multiple Paths to Multiple Lifeby Chris Kempes and David KrakauerSimon Conway Morris (re: macroevolutionary trends)Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolutionby Jaewon Shin et al.Smarter Parts Make Collective Systems Too Stubbornby Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta MagazineComplexity 90 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human DataomeWill Ratcliff (re: yeasts and emergent multi-cellularity)Complexity 29 - On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 3)Synthetic criticality in cellular brainsby Ricard Solé et al.Tom Ray (re: artificial life)Complexity and fragility in ecological networksby Ricard Solé and José MontoyaEcological Networks and Their Fragilityby José Montoya, Stuart Pimm, and Ricard SoléThe small world of human languageby Ramon Ferrer i Cancho and Ricard SoléMacroscopic patterns of interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcementby Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Sam Scarpino, and Jean-Gabriel YoungComplexity 56 - J. Doyne Farmer on The Complexity Economics RevolutionComplexity 66 - Katherine Collins on Better Investing Through BiomimicryChris Langton (re: criticality)Jim Crutchfield (re: the edge of chaos)Per Bak (re: self-organized criticality)Complexity 10 - Melanie Moses on Metabolic Scaling in Biology & ComputationComplexity 3 - Sabine Hauert on Swarming Across ScalesNiles Eldredge (re: punctuated equilibria)Terraforming the biosphere: can bioengineering save us?SFI Seminar by Ricard SoléEcological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 yearsby Ricard Solé and Simon LevinEcological firewalls for synthetic biologyby Blai Vidiella and Ricard SoléRachel Armstrong (re: synthetic biology for CO2 fixing in concrete)Stewardship of global collective behaviorby Joseph Bak-Coleman et al.Complexity 64 - Reconstructing Ancient Superhighways with Stefani Crabtree and Devin WhiteComplexity 5 - Jennifer Dunne on Food Webs & ArchaeoEcology