Sunday, July 24, 2022

What Happens at Santa Fe Institute Stays at Santa Fe Institute

I am heading off to Santa Fe Institute (SFI) for a bit.

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1 comment:

Ellie K said...

It is I, Ellie Kesselman, sometimes EllieAsksWhy, whom you may recall from Quora. We follow each other there. Quora has degraded a lot, as you may have noticed. I know a few of your UCLA math department colleagues slightly, as fellow Wikipedia math editors. I suspect that I know you from some other nook or cranny of the Internet but it has slipped my mind.

All of that is by way of preface to my perhaps impertinent question: Might you give us some insights about what goes on at the Santa Fe Institute? It need not be too detailed. I am curious because I grew up in Las Cruces which was due south of Santa Fe a few miles from New Mexico State University. Emmanuel Derman, the cranky physics guy (well, he is cranky with me but nice to better-behaved people) would go to Santa Fe Institute periodically, and had the same 'Fight Club' ethos as you of keeping what went on there a secret. My father majored in physics with Murray-Gellman a few, um, a lot of years back; M-G is at Santa Fe Institute, so it isn't as though I don't know who frequents the place. That was a tiny joke.

I have also been curious to ask you about some of the more flamboyant complexity accounts on Twitter. There are lots of impresarios on Twitter! Although I am skeptical of many of them, I notice that people who are otherwise credible in another field of expertise are easily awed by complexity types. It is almost an Elon Musk wow-factor! There is one in particular, Paul Port3si, about whom I have some doubts. I have resorted to l337 speak for discretion.

I do notice that, say, NN Taleb, Derman, and Judea Pearl (admittedly not hard core complexity types) are polite and encouraging but never give extravagant praise on Twitter!

11:30 AM, August 07, 2022

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