Understanding Human Behavior - Video
by Santa Fe Institute
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Description
Our multidisciplinary, quantitative lens can help deepen our understanding of perhaps the most complex of complex systems, namely, human behavior. The emergence, persistence, and demise of social institutions and their co-evolution with distinctive human behaviors - such as altruistic cooperation, out-group hostility and adaptive learning - are typically overlooked in standard economic and other behavioral science models. In line with the well-established scientific tradition of the Institute, this research is characterized by (a) its trans-disciplinary nature, (b) its use of nonlinear dynamical systems to study the explicit out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the relevant processes, (c) and sustained interaction between mathematical modeling and well-defined empirical case studies and problems of potentially great contemporary practical relevance. NOTE: Please excuse the production quality of some of our older videos. They were transferred from our video tape archive.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CleanVideoFrom Democratic Consensus to Cannibalistic Hordes: The Principles of Collective Animal Behavior | Collective organization is everywhere, both around us and within us. Our brains are composed of billions of interconnected cells communicating with chemical and electrical signals. We are integrated in our own collective human society. Elsewhere in the natural world hundreds of thousands of blind army ants coordinate a massive raid across the rainforest floor, a flock of birds arcs and ripples while descending to roost, and a fish school convulses, as if it is a single entity, when attacked by a predator. How can animal groups move in unison? How does individual behavior produce group dynamics? Do animal groups function as a “collective mind”? From locust swarms to bird flocks, from consensus decision-making in fish and among humans, Couzin will discuss how, and why, coordinated collective behavior is so pervasive within the natural world. | 7/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 2 | CleanVideoThe Penguin and The Leviathan: The Science and Practice of Cooperation | Harvard professor and business author Yochai Benkler questions the centuries-old practice of managing people through incentive structures | 10/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 3 | CleanVideoSecrets of the Heart: The Electrocardiogram, Complex Systems Science and Fundamental Laws of Biology | The heart’s electric currents have been known for one hundred years, but three-quarters of a century later, the ECG is still giving up its secrets. Buchman explains the basic ECG signal and its relationship with the function of the human heart. He then turns to complex systems science to discover hidden structure within the ECG. These lie in frequencies (akin to musical tones); in variability (akin to the change in directions of a walker choosing not-quite-random steps); and in network design (akin to adding/losing elements of a power grid). Finally, he explores the ways in which the ECG might point towards the existence of fundamental laws of biology. Armed with these fundamental laws, we ask how complex systems science might allow us to guide care in the intensive care unit. | 9/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 4 | CleanVideoWild and Domesticated Religions: How the Machinery of Religion Evolved | -- | 4/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 5 | CleanVideoStylish Mathematics | -- | 11/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 6 | CleanVideoRice Paddies, Coral Reefs & The Goddess of the Lake | -- | 12/1/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 7 | CleanVideoThe Geometry of Consonance: Music and Mathematics | -- | 11/17/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 8 | CleanVideo'Delight Makers' and 'Delight Takers' in the Archaeology of Bandelier National Monument | -- | 11/13/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 9 | CleanVideoThe Evolution of Altruism | -- | 10/30/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 10 | CleanVideoBuilding a Humanoid Robot to Be Human | -- | 10/29/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 11 | CleanVideoGrowing the Anasazi in a Computer: Creating Alternative Culture Histories | -- | 10/29/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 12 | CleanVideoThe Peculiar Logic of Human Values | -- | 10/23/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 13 | CleanVideoThe Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies | -- | 10/23/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 14 | CleanVideoDevil or Angel: Genetic Conflicts in Brain and Behavior | -- | 10/23/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 14 Episodes |
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