User Interfaces for the Complexity of Nature

Quantum information theory has given us a new and interesting twist on the old problem of quantum gravity: the Universe as a Computation. As the computation proceeds, reality unfolds. Information theory allows us to study the behavior of a system without committing to a particular story about it, for example, the story of spacetime. We can go beyond the point where the old story is no longer useful. Information theory comes with a new style of stories about how the world works, stories of complexity and emergence. This is not unique to physics. The same shift has happened in neuroscience where the predictive coding framework for the brain has turned our thoughts and emotions into emergent constructs, tools our brain uses to move our body. They are just like spacetime in physics. This talk explores recent developments both in physics and neuroscience to identify some of the key new ideas likely to shape our future stories of the world. Speakers Fotini Markopoulou, CEO, Empathic Technologies; Founding Faculty, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics