Santa Fe Institute Alumni Fiesta 2018 Discussion

Alumni Fiesta 2018 Home Participants Speaker Slides Discussion Themes Ride Shares After Hours Photos Speakers Photos Participants

Themed Discussions, Reckless Ideas, and Networking

Saturday, July 7, 2018

Order of events:
1. Brainstorm discussion themes
2. Nucleate into breakout groups
3. Breakouts groups discuss themes
4. Break
5. Reconvene: Share breakout discussion ideas
6. Mixing, reflection booth, and networking

After reconvening, discussion participants were asked: What questions or thoughts were provocative? Brilliant? Insightful? Surprising? Important? The following notes reflect some of the answers that were given, organized by theme.

Sustainability Group

Defining sustainability is hard
Dynamic nature of systems is crucial
What moves & what doesn’t? At what time scales?
Process is key
Sustainable Development Goals = 17 goals. But what processes?
How can SFI connect with policy decision making?
Belief change vs. knowledge transfer vs. science communication
Sustainability as SFI theme?
How to model interactions between different goals?
Use of TV/video/media to reach out?
Relative lack of sustainability practitioners

Emerging Data & Technology Group

Risk of miscalculation in implementation of AI
How can innovation translate into complexity?
Cascading ideas (internet → Amazon → ??)
Policy makers facilitating innovation
Policy makers investing in infrastructure
Pros/Cons of these investments
Under what conditions should we hand decisions to AI?
When is it good to slow down or speed up implementation?
Many difficult societal questions that are cultural in nature
The discussion needs to be cultural

Methodologies Group

Methodology means a lot of different things
Multiple time scales, space, magnitude, etc., are important
How can we foster a paradigm shift?
What biases exist in the methods we have? Among whom?
Unprecedented/unimagined solutions. Gordian knot solutions.
When to start over from the beginning?
What questions aren’t we asking?
Functional fixedness & cognitive bias (candle-and-nails problem)
Are equation-based & algorithm based methods different? How? Same or different answers?
Qualitative & quantitative methods
Methods as ways of thinking vs. coordinating & educating
Methodologies for education to bridge reductionism and emergence

Design and Design Interventions Group

Importance of goal functions
Multiple actors & goals functions
No single goal function -- viewpoints matter!!
Cost/Benefit/Price/Value
Perceived value
Low friction processes
When to strive for simplicity in design?
Perception of value affecting design
Evolution of preferences
Different levels of abstraction and difficulty of translating across
It’s OK to have hard-to-define objectives - feedbacks are crucial

Community and Responsibility Group

Importance of different points of view
Commitment ‘to hanging in’
Learn from other’s successes
Constraints can lead to creativity
How to embrace complexity
Creative destruction
Goal, experiment, reconvene
Responsiveness to bigger trends
Respect boundaries?? When? How?
Zone af agreement, start small, expand
Unifying events
Redefine failure: treasure trove of ideas whose time hasn’t come yet

General Topic Brainstorming

Framing ethics
Respecting cultural differences
Red/Blue divides & bridges
Complexity community
Spirituality, Religion & SFI
Social media for empowerment vs. exploitation
Early education
Joy
Challenges of implementing AI
Sustainable development goals
Solving social problems from an ecosystems perspective
Organizational design control
What will be necessary to have fresh water in the future?
Why is it hard to do good?
Funding
Health
How to plan/control under uncertainty
New product design
InterPlanetary