All day
Annual Applied Complexity Network and Board of Trustees Symposium
“Civilization” is an ancient ideal. The word’s Latin root, civilis, points to the values of someone inhabiting a city. To be civilized means to accept certain norms and behaviors putatively necessary for life in a complex community. We might think of civilization as something inherently collective, the cumulative creative and expressive achievement of humanity. Civilization implies sophistication, breadth, self-awareness, and a sense of place in time. And yet civilization is fragile, transitory, capable of changing, collapsing, or fading away.
Civilization has always had its critics and discontents, too. What is lost when we give up simplicity or wield the idea of civilization as an instrument against others? Walter Benjamin’s adage reminds us that, paradoxically, “there is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Now more than ever, in a time when the world wobbles between the astonishing advances of human technology and our uncertain ability to survive what we have created, we need to ask what civilization is, where it is going, and whether we can enjoy its advantages while addressing its faults.
How are technology and civilization related, and will future technologies be likely to usher in a fundamental break in the history of civilization? Is civilization an amplifier of collective intelligence, a mechanism to police ignorance and violence, or merely the collective justification for avarice?
Is the globe divided by fundamentally incompatible “civilizations” destined to “clash”? Or can the project of civilization contribute to the pursuit of peace? And will new technological platforms promote decentralized civilizations that transcend geography creating ahistorical world orders?
Can the idea of civilization help us understand the trajectory of past societies and emergent values and behaviors in human communities over time? And can we avoid collapse by learning from the disintegrations of the past?
We are asking what complexity science and related creations of the human imagination tell us about the past, present, and future of civilization. In the emergent civilization of a globalized commons might we reason our way towards something more inclusive and humane?
AGENDA
**Please note that all events are listed in Mountain Time.**
- FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10th -
Santa Fe Institute’s Cowan Campus
1399 Hyde Park Road
8:30AM - Breakfast
9:00AM - Tutorial on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Transformer Networks with Maell Cullen and Arseny Moskvichev
SITE Santa Fe
1606 Paseo de Peralta
12:00PM - Lunch
1:00PM - Welcome and Introduction with David Krakauer
1:05PM - Civilization: The Long View with Kyle Harper
1:50PM - Modeling the End of Civilization with David Wolpert, Raissa D’Souza, Simon Levin, and Lord John Alderdice
2:50PM - Afternoon Break
3:20PM - "Collapse" or "Conquest"? Two Mesoamerican Stories with Charles C. Mann
4:05PM - The Economics of Civilization with W. Brian Arthur and Sam Bowles
5:05PM - Adjourn
5:30PM - Cocktail Reception & Dinner at Local Santa Fe Restaurant
- SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11th -
SITE Santa Fe
1606 Paseo de Peralta
8:00AM - Breakfast
9:00AM - Catastrophe, Complexity, and the Collapse of Civilizations: Are there lessons to be learned from 1177 BC? with Eric Cline
9:45AM - The Collective Dimensions of Civilization with Hahrie Han
10:30AM - Morning Break
11:00AM - Postdoc Flash Talks with Saverio Perri, Kerice Doten-Snitker, Anna Guerrero, and Katrin Schmelz
11:30AM - The Civilization of the Machine with Blaise Agüera y Arcas
12:15PM - Lunch
1:15PM - The Architecture of Civilization with Nicholas de Monchaux
2:00PM - The Difference Between Global and Planetary Civilization with Stewart Brand
2:45PM - Afternoon Break
3:15PM - Creating Civilizations with Jonah Nolan and David Krakauer
4:00PM - The Contribution of Physics to Civilization with George Johnson, Carlo Rovelli, and Geoffrey West
5:00PM - Adjourn
5:30PM - Cocktail Reception & Dinner at Local Santa Fe Restaurant
Speakers
Blaise Agüera y ArcasGoogle Research
Lord John AlderdiceUK House of Lords
Yuen Yuen AngAlfred Chandler Chair of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University
W. Brian ArthurExternal Professor at the Santa Fe Institute
Sam BowlesProfessor at SFI
Stewart BrandThe Long Now Foundation
Eric ClineProfessor at George Washington University, and Author of '1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed'
Raissa D'SouzaAssociate Dean of Research + Professor, UC Davis College of Engineering; Science Board Member + External Professor at SFI
Hahrie HanProfessor & Director of the SNF Agora Institute, and Faculty Director of P3 Research Lab at Johns Hopkins University
Kyle HarperProfessor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma; Fractal Faculty, SFI
George JohnsonScience journalist and author of "Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Physics"
David KrakauerPresident + William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at SFI
Tim KohlerRegents Professor of Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology (emeritus), Washington State University, and External Professor at SFI
Simon A. LevinScience Board at SFI; James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton
Charles C. MannJournalist and Author of "1491," "1493," and "The Wizard and the Prophet"
Nicholas de MonchauxProfessor and Head of Architecture at MIT, and Author of "Science Fiction And The Future Of California's Ecology"
Jonathan NolanScreenwriter, Director, and Producer ("Memento," "Westworld," and more)
Carlo RovelliTheoretical physicist and author of "The Order of Time," "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics," and "White Holes"
Geoffrey WestPast President, Shannan Distinguished Professor + Science Steering Committee Member at SFI
David WolpertProfessor at SFI; External Professor at the Complexity Science Hub in ViennaOrganizers
Casey CoxDirector of the Applied Complexity Network at the Santa Fe InstituteKyle HarperProfessor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma; Fractal Faculty, SFIDavid KrakauerPresident + William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at SFI
William TracyVice President for Applied Complexity, SFI