Sharon Glotzer, a computational physicist and professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, uses statistical mechanics to probe how the properties of materials emerge from the dynamics of their countless constituent particles. This week, she speaks with host Steven Strogatz about how a broken oil pump changed her life, how entropy is all about choices, and how she is driven to find the simple rules that explain the universe’s complexity.

Listen at: www.quantamagazine.org

Complexity theory took off in the 1990s and four of the key people who shaped how these ideas were developed for application to the social world were represented in this event. In this unique retrospective, we explored how these four thinkers approached complexity thinking over long careers.

Invited Speakers

Peter Allen  – Embracing Complexity
David Byrne – Complexity and the Social Sciences
Chris Mowles in the legacy of Ralph Stacey –  Complex Responsive Processes
Rika Preiser in the legacy of Paul Cilliers –  Complexity and Postmodernism
The discussion was hosted by Jean Boulton and featured a guest appearence from Brian Arthur (who developed complexity economics)

The speakers were each interviewed and then discussed issues with each other, before answering questions from the audience.

Watch the video at: complexity-physics.org

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Watch full talk at: www.youtube.com

The molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler is deciphering the chemical languages that bacteria use to coordinate their assaults on a host.

Read the full article at: www.quantamagazine.org

César Hidalgo discusses his new book “How Humans Judge Machines”, in which he compares people’s reactions to actions performed by humans and machines. Using data collected in dozens of experiments, this book reveals the biases that permeate human-machine interactions.

Are there conditions in which we judge machines unfairly? Is our judgment of machines affected by the moral dimensions of a scenario? Is our judgment of machines correlated with demographic factors such as education or gender? César Hidalgo and colleagues use hard science to take on these pressing technological questions. Using randomized experiments, they create revealing counterfactuals and build statistical models to explain how people judge artificial intelligence and whether they do it fairly.

Learn more about the book here: https://www.judgingmachines.com/.

Watch at: www.youtube.com