Doyne Farmer on making sense of chaos for a better world

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Doyne Farmer is something of a rebel. Back in the seventies, when he was a student, he walked into a casino in Las Vegas, sat down at a roulette table and beat the house. To anyone watching the wheel spin and the ball clatter to its final resting place, his choice of number would’ve looked like a lucky guess. But knowing the physics of the game and armed with the world’s first wearable computer, which he’d designed, a seemingly random win was actually somewhat predictable.

Doyne is an American scientist and entrepreneur who pioneered many of the fields that define the scientific agenda of our time, from chaos theory and complex systems to wearable computing. He uses big data and evermore powerful computers to apply complex systems science to the economy, to better predict our future. Much like roulette, economics can appear random but, with the right tools and understanding, it is anything but.

Now Director of the Complexity Economics Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford, Doyne says there’s a real need to act, to use these powers of prediction to help resolve one of the most pressing questions of our time - how best to prevent climate change.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Beth Eastwood

Transcript

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0:58.8	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
1:01.4	My guest today is something of a rebel.
1:07.4	Back in the 70s, when he was 24 years old, he walked into a casino in Las Vegas, sat down at a roulette table and beat the house.
1:10.1	To anyone watching the wheel spin and the ball
1:12.8	clatter to its final resting place, Doin Farmer's choice of number would have looked like a lucky guess,
1:19.1	but knowing the physics of the game and armed with the world's first wearable computer,
1:24.4	which he designed, seemingly random winds were actually somewhat predictable.
1:30.3	Randomness, says Doyne, is a concept that depends on the state of your understanding,
1:35.0	something he's shown time and again over his career.
1:38.5	Professor Doyne Farmer is an American scientist and entrepreneur who pioneered many of the
1:43.1	fields that define the scientific
	...

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