#008 with Tamara van der Does

from Alien Crash Site · host Santa Fe Institute, Tamara van der Does, Caitlin McShea, Michael Garfield

Tamara’s Website, Google Scholar Page & Twitter • InterPlanetary Festival Website • Alien Crash Site Podcast • In 72 hours of sci-fi, postdocs transmit parental model of alien civilization [video] • Greetings from a Triparental Planet 72 Hours of Science Pre-Printby Gizem Bacaksizlar, Stefani Crabtree, Joshua Garland, Natalie Grefenstette, Albert Kao, David Kinney, Artemy Kolchinsky, Tyler Marghetis, Michael Price, Maria Riolo, Hajime Shimao, Ashley Teufel, Tamara van der Does, and Vicky Chuqiao Yang • Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolution by Jaeweon Shin, Michael Holton Price, David H. Wolpert, Hajime Shimao, Brendan Tracey, and Timothy A. Kohler • SFI’s VP for Science Jennifer Dunne Remembers Ecologist Bob May • Complexity Podcast • IPFest 2019 Worldbuilding Panel with Rebecca Roanhorse, Ty Franck, Daniel Abraham, Michael Drout, and Cris Moore • Anathem by former SFI Miller Scholar Neal Stephenson • Dark Integers by Greg Egan • Aliens comic series by Dark Horse

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Mar 4, 2021

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This week, Complexity Podcast host, Michael Garfield, comes into the Zone to co-host an interview with SFI Program Postdoctoral Fellow Tamara van der Does (who models belief change using techniques inspired by statistical physics) for a three-headed conversation totally befitting the subject matter: a work of speculative “sci-fi science” produced by SFI’s postdoctoral researchers during a 72-hour lock-in complex systems charette. Their question: how might an extraterrestrial civilization much like our own work if their biology required three-parent families? We discuss the interplay between individual and society, the role of counterfactuals and speculation in both scientific research and sci-fi, and what technology she’d hope to find left in the wake of an alien visitation.

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#008 with Tamara van der Does

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