In the previous article, I presented the problem of gut instincts and personal preferences in decision-making and argued that we need a more scientific model of the basis for risk-taking and risk-aversion in decision-making. In this final part of the article I will exp...

Using gut instincts

Are you a glass half-empty or half-full kind of person? The question paints optimism and pessimism as a personality trait. Whether, or not, we seem to be pessimists or optimists, risk takers, or risk-averse for that matter, the question reflects some...

Predictability in nature allows complex solutions

Surprisingly large parts of our world are simple in the sense that nature’s predictability allows us to design complex systems on top of this ‘simplicity’. As I’ve mentioned in another blog post, ‘Complexity 101’, which...

The scientific imagination is now profoundly digital in a way that owes much to Turing, Von Nuemann and the first days of scientific computing. The growing science of complexity and 'emergence' in natural systems merely adds to this sense of a new lens through which to...

We were recently presenting at a Science Has no Borders: Unwrapped! (ShnB) interactive event at UCL that was really exciting to be a part of.  ShnB is about co-

What is novelty? Is there really such a thing as 'novelty' in reality, or does it all depend on your perspective and existing knowledge? Is novelty a problem now for modern philosophers as much as it was for the Ancients?

The problem of novelty was a question that reall...

By the end of this article, I promise you will understand what scientists usually mean when they talk about ‘complexity’ which is also what we mean by complexity when we talk about it on this website. By the way, as I will explain, it is not the same as 'chaos theory'...

It is a truism that most of us carry out our everyday commonsense tasks with very little conscious effort or analysis. Indeed to find everyday tasks formidably complex can often be a sign of mental illness or disability. The world of artificial intelligence, however,...

Are we still two cultures?

In 1959, the scientist and author CP Snow gave a lecture entitled ‘Two Cultures’. CP Snow’s speech was about the failure of the humanities to understand scientific culture. This argued failure of the humanities persisted despite the dramatic e...