Social Minds

Complex Systems Summer School 2015 Home Surveys/Evaluations Logistics Payment Instructions Faculty Panel Questions Faculty Publications Lecture Slides Participants Schedule Background Readings Complexity Puns Software Projects & Working Groups Project Group Meeting Schedule Sign Up Sheet for Meetings with Josh Tutorials Project Presentations Final Papers After Hours Restaurant Guide Resource Guide Photos TShirts

Minds are larger than brains: we not only think, we think together. Understanding these social minds requires concepts and tools that go beyond naieve introspection and beyond even the science of lab-based psychology. Drawing on case studies ranging from Victorian London to 21st Century Afghanistan and online worlds such as Wikipedia, I'll show you how to quantify the signals and thoughts that flow through our social worlds. We'll see how sophisticated tools from the theory of computation and from dynamical systems can help explain and predict the emergence of power and dominance in animal society, the degeneration of the French revolution into murderous terror, or the structure of surprise in Milton's Paradise Lost.