Neil Chilson is here.

He is a senior research fellow for technology and innovation at Stand Together.

He's also a former chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission.

Neil and I, your host, Corbyn Barthold, have a shared interest

in complexity theory. So I was very excited when I learned that he was writing a book on the subject.

That book is called Getting Out of Control, Emergent Leadership in a Complex World. It is out

now. It is very good, and I recommend it.

Today we're going to talk about the book, The Wonders of Complexity Theory, and some deeper

philosophical questions about where we're all headed. Neil, welcome back to the Tech Policy

podcast. It's great to be here, as always. As you... Neil, welcome back to the Tech Policy Podcast.

It's great to be here, as always.

As you know, I am, for you at least, a new host,

but I believe you are one of the show's most frequent outside guests, so it's great to have you back.

I love being on this podcast.

When you and I use the word complexity here, we're using it in a somewhat technical sense.

We don't just mean complicated, which is a distinct idea.

So could you start us off by just spelling out what the complexity in complexity theory and in your book is?

Yeah, so it's a great question.

It's also a very difficult one to answer.

In fact, the area of complex adaptive systems, just sort of the name that this whole field has taken on,

there's lots of debates and there's no settled definition of complexity.

In my book, I refer to a couple different ones.

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