Our thoughts are with the many victims of disease, abuse, injustice, and exclusion. Black lives and Native lives matter. Our community of complexity researchers are aligned with all who are committed to freedom, justice, diversity, opportunity, and empiricism. We stand with those who strive to provide the most powerful ideas, methods, and tools pursuant to a civil and equitable society. We add our voice to the moment, defend freedom of expression, and offer all that we can in pursuit of a safer and fairer world.
For those who have inquired about scientific insights that can help with the complex issues of inequality and society, and in the pursuit of principles to build a fairer society, we offer the following media:
A white paper by Rajiv Sethi, Divya Siddarth, Nia Johnson, Brandon Terry, Julie Seager, Mary Travis Bassett, and Meredith Rosenthal, published by the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics. It presents the statistics on demographic groups that have been most afflicted by the COVID-19 epidemic, and discusses the reasons for disparities by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
-Models that protect the vulnerable
An essay by Melanie Moses and Kathy Powers, for SFI’s Transmission series. It documents the failure of epidemic models to incorporate racial & socioeconomic realities, as evidenced by the disparate impact of COVID-19 in zip codes associated with African and Native American communities.
-The Algorithmic Justice Working Group
A website for researchers from the Santa Fe Institute and the University of New Mexico with backgrounds in computer science, political science, mathematics, and law. Because the data used to train algorithms can give rise to bias against certain socioeconomic groups, the members of this working group advocate for transparent use of algorithms and provide guidance to policymakers.
-"The police are a bunch of monkeys"
An article in The Economist highlighting Jessica Flack’s research into the role of simian "police" in monkey societies, who serve the greater good by de-escalating violence.
-The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens
A book by Sam Bowles that describes how civic motives and good governance go hand-in-hand.
-The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy
A book by Scott E. Page on how diverse teams outperform homogenous ones.
-Countering hate on social media: Large-scale classification of hate and counter-speech
A preprint by Joshua Garland, Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi, Jean-Gabriel Young, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, and Mirta Galesic. It presents their large-scale analysis of hate-speech and counter-hate speech on Twitter, with an eye toward understanding which counter-speech tactics can restore civil discourse.
-Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice
A book by Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi that reveals how stereotypes distort interactions between police and civilians, perpetrators and victims, and the criminal justice system. A deep examination of trust and bias.
-Socioeconomic bias in influenza surveillance
New research by SFI External Professor Lauren Ancel Meyers, former Omidyar Fellow Sam Scarpino, and their colleagues published in PLOS. A critical look at how disease surveillance has failed impoverished populations in the U.S.
This statement was updated on June 22, 2020, to include the sentence "Black lives and Native lives matter."
This statement was updated on July 11, 2020, to include "Socioeconomic bias in influenza surveillance"