CSSS 2010 Santa Fe-Blog

CSSS Santa Fe 2010

Use this page as an informal forum to share your opinion and discuss anything at CSSS'10.

!Pictures:

June 6: Mixer on the terrace and the beautiful sunset:

http://picasaweb.google.com/worldmeetsbogdan/SantaFeDay0#slideshow/5479884534414655074 please email bstate@stanford.edu if you'd like a full-size copy of any picture!

Michael Szell: Some people asked me about the URL of my online game. Here it is: http://www.pardus.at - Enjoy! :) (The tutorial may some time to complete..)

June 7 (Ana Hocevar): So I know my official day of contribution on the blog is not until tomorrow, but I wanted to share this with those who are interested. When I get inspired by someone giving a good talk, I have a tendency to write down some of the statements I find encouraging or funny and so on. So here are my favorite quotes from the first day of lectures (and I hope the lecturers don't mind this):

"If there is one thing you should learn at the summer school, it's to speak up." -Dan Rockmore

"Science is a social thing." - Dan Rockmore

"You start with an idea and end up with reality." - Dan Rockmore

"Commit to taking advantage of this opportunity." -Dan Rockmore

"Let it all marinade up there." -Dan Rockmore

"And wear sunscreen." -Ginger Richardson

Dan Rockmore: Here is a link to the NYR piece I mentioned today http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/24/other-side-science/ Good to meet you all and looking fwd to a great CSSS.

Monday June 7

Lucas Antiqueira
Maria Opazo

Alison Snyder

I thought it might be interesting to give my perspective on today as a journalist and writer. What I starred and underlined in my notebook, what stuck in my head and why.

First as a journalist…

Schooling Fish

I’m familiar with some of Iain’s research – the beautiful images and descriptions of phenomena that many curious people outside the sciences have seen and thought about lends itself to visual storytelling -- but today was the first time I heard him discuss his fish work. In particular, I’m going to follow what he’s looking at in terms of how individuals influence others in the group and the (preliminary?) finding that some individuals consistently influence the group. Because it is unpublished, I’ll check in with him periodically to discuss in more detail and see how the research is progressing as well as whether and when he might expect to publish the research.

Moiré-ing

Have you ever seen someone on TV who's striped shirt competed with the gravity of what they were saying? In TV production we pay editors large amounts of money for hours of work to fix moiré-ing so the term “numerical moiré-ing” caught my attention.

Chaotic Mixing

Liz mentioned her CU colleague who described clams that open up to exploit chaotic mixing to mix up their gametes. The counterintuitive idea of systems not only embracing chaos but exploiting it, is a provocative theme to explore in a general audience story. To most people, chaos is something to be avoided.

Ideas that got my attention as a writer…

Gas Gauges and Indelible Images

In opening her lecture, Liz used the metaphor of her old car’s gas gauge to illustrate non-linearity. The gauge stayed on full then plunged when the tank was near empty rather than dropping as the gas level dropped. While it was a brief aside about a concept that is very easily understandable to a scientist, it might not be to a non-scientist. To someone who has never heard of or thought about non-linearity, they will understand it the first time they hear this metaphor and they’ll remember it. Even if they forget what the gas needle was illustrating, they can back track. Non-linearity becomes an indelible idea.

As a writer, the metaphor also reminded me of the power of a simple idea in telling a story. One of the most difficult tasks is parsing the scale of what a story is about. Sometimes the most meaningful way to tell a story about the Empire State building is to describe one of the bricks.

In other words, today was full of lots of ideas about research to follow and reminders about how to effectively communicate even the most basic of ideas and the power of doing just that.

Looking forward to tomorrow…

Kyla Dahlin

My notes from today are mostly graphs, equations, and Dan's quoted quote about "what if biologists had tried to develop a theory of gravity." I'd love to see a debate between the math/physics/universality camp and the biology/ecology/sociology/everything is different camp. Seems like an interesting tension within Complex Systems folks.

So far the self-organization into project groups seems to be going well, and I'm sure it will evolve over time. Tonight a few of us talked about the pressure to collaborate being somewhat foreign - so much of PhD work is so solitary. I'm sure the sociologists would love to track the networks that are forming, the different players, and our final results.

And I think we all are trying to maintain a balance of fun, thinking, working, and staying level in a world with constantly flowing coffee.

Tuesday June 8

Andrew Banooni
Xin Wang
Andreas Ligtvoet
Ana Hocevar

Other remarks

Some people may be interested in the http://decoi.collectivae.net/ Design Of Collective Intelligence series - those are 1 week long versions of what SFI is trying to do, but mainly focused at multi agent systems.

Also interesting, and this is even a longer shot, is http://www.nextgenerationinfrastructures.eu/academy if you are interested in (physical) networks and infrastructures.

CSSS 2010 Santa Fe-Blog

From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki

Contents

Monday June 7

Alison Snyder

Kyla Dahlin

Tuesday June 8

Other remarks

Wednesday June 9

Thursday June 10

Friday June 11

(Saturday June 12)

(Sunday June 13)

Monday June 14

Tuesday June 15

Wednesday June 16

Thursday June 17

Friday June 18

(Saturday June 19)

(Sunday June 20)

Monday June 21

Tuesday June 22

Wednesday June 23

Thursday June 24

Friday June 25