167 | Chiara Marletto on Constructor Theory, Physics, and Possibility
Traditional physics works within the "Laplacian paradigm": you give me the state of the universe (or some closed system), some equations of motion, then I use those equations to evolve the system thro...
4 Okt 20211h 35min
166 | Betül Kaçar on Paleogenomics and Ancient Life
In the question to understand the biology of life, we are (so far) limited to what happened here on Earth. That includes the diversity of biological organisms today, but also its entire past history. ...
27 Sep 20211h 14min
165 | Kathryn Paige Harden on Genetics, Luck, and Fairness
It's pretty clear that our genes affect, though they don't completely determine, who we grow up to be; children's physical and mental characteristics are not completely unrelated to those of their par...
20 Sep 20211h 25min
AMA | September 2021
Welcome to the September 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of q...
16 Sep 20213h 38min
164 | Herbert Gintis on Game Theory, Evolution, and Social Rationality
How human beings behave is, for fairly evident reasons, a topic of intense interest to human beings. And yet, not only is there much we don't understand about human behavior, different academic discip...
13 Sep 20211h 29min
163 | Nigel Goldenfeld on Phase Transitions, Criticality, and Biology
Physics is extremely good at describing simple systems with relatively few moving parts. Sadly, the world is not like that; many phenomena of interest are complex, with multiple interacting parts and ...
6 Sep 20211h 31min
162 | Leidy Klotz on Our Resistance to Subtractive Change
There is no general theory of problem-solving, or even a reliable set of principles that will usually work. It's therefore interesting to see how our brains actually go about solving problems. Here's ...
30 Aug 20211h 14min
161 | W. Brian Arthur on Complexity Economics
Economies in the modern world are incredibly complex systems. But when we sit down to think about them in quantitative ways, it's natural to keep things simple at first. We look for reliable relations...
23 Aug 20211h 35min
