286 - Notes on Complexity - Neil Theise

You Are Not So Smart

Science, Psychology, Brain, Business, Mental Health, Culture, Neuroscience, Mind, Health

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode we sit down with professor of Neil Theise, the author of Notes on Complexity, to get an introduction to complexity theory, the science of how complex systems behave – from cells to human beings, ecosystems, the known universe, and beyond – and we explore if Ian Malcolm was right when he told us in Jurassic Park that "Life, um, finds a way."

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mm.
0:02.0	Mm.
0:03.0	uh.
0:04.0	. .
0:05.0	Mm.
0:06.0	P on down into the middle of the British
0:08.0	And down into the middle of the British
0:10.0	and gay.
0:11.0	Yeah, we were cool, we got by the bed. They went tired. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast. Episode 286. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh.
0:34.0	Oh, yes, and 30 years old, yes, and 30 years ago Stephen Spielberg's Jurassic Park wasn't just
0:57.6	the biggest movie of the year. It felt like it was the biggest movie of all time. Today it's still the highest-growing movie of Spielberg's
1:05.6	career which says a lot. His career includes Raiders of the Lost Arc and Jaws and E.T.
1:10.7	All of which were blockbusters in their day. But the cultural impact of Jurassic Park was immense and long lasting and it's still with us. It's still making money too. It cost about $63 million to make. And thanks in part to the re-release in 2013,
1:28.0	it has now grossed more than $1.1 billion, with a B, dollars worldwide. When I first saw Jurassic Park, my favorite character by far was Dr Ian Malcolm a scampy flirty self-amused
1:56.4	playful shades and all black wearing rock star mathematician portrayed by
2:01.1	mmm as Jeff Goldbl, who really dialed up his overall gold-bluminess for the role that he was playing as an expert on Chaos Theory.
2:12.0	Based on that expertise, Ian Malcolm, the character, was very skeptical and pessimistic about the idea of bringing dinosaurs back to life.
2:21.0	Throughout the first third of the film, he keeps telling people that based
2:26.5	on what we know in the realm of complexity science, life as a complex system is dangerously unpredictable even when you know a great deal about the starting
2:37.6	conditions a great deal about all the bits and pieces of the thing you're about to do when you include life in such a thing,
2:46.1	he laments the hubris required to assume a small number of human beings could control nature to the point that they could run a theme park featuring long extinct creatures where the public would be invited to interact with them.
3:04.0	And as he famously said in the film, no matter what controls and safety protocols you put in place in such a scenario.
	...

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