We live in an age of increasing complexity, where accelerating technology and global interconnection hold more promise – and more peril – than any other time in human history. As well as financial crises, issues around climate change, automation, growing inequality and polarization are all rooted in the economy, yet standard economic predictions fail us.
In this interview, Dr Vivas Shah MBE DL speaks to J. Doyne Farmer, who is an American complex systems scientist and entrepreneur who was a pioneer in many of the fields that define the scientific agenda of our times: dynamical systems, chaos, complex systems, artificial life, wearable computing, time series analysis, theoretical biology, and the theory of prediction. Currently he is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science in the school of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, Senior Associate Research Fellow at Christ Church College, Chief Scientist at Macrocosm, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Topic discussed include:
- What is a complex system?
- Why are people so unwilling to adopt complexity models?
- How do you set parameters (and boundaries) on a complexity model?
- How do we make the connection between say- biological complexity- and economics?
- What are the distortions that credit creates in the market?
- Can complexity help us understand how markets respond to news events?
- Can complexity help us better regulate?
- How can complexity help us better model climate change?
- How will AI impact the practical application of complexity?
Access the full interview via the link below.
