[...]
SCOTT PAGE: Well, the field of study that I work in is called
Complex Systems which is a field that covers a lot of
disciplines: economics, political science, biology,
ecology. And really what inspired me is I was trained as
an economist and mathematician and the things I was learning in
this sort of standard science didn't line up with
the world I was seeing. So, for example, in economics
I was learning that the world was an equilibrium.
When I looked at the world, it was not an equilibrium it was
kind of a mess, especially, the economic, and political and
social worlds. So I thought, boy, is there anybody out there
that's doing anything to kind of understand complex processes and
it turned out that there were some scientists doing this at
some of the national laboratories in a place called
the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Michigan where I
teach. And so because it resonated with my life
experience and what I thought the world looked like I decided
to sort of join that tribe, so to speak, and do the work
that they do.
Oh, that's easy. So Leo Hurwicz, who is – won a Nobel
Prize in economics, who a kind of a shadow advisor to me. He
was visiting Northwestern from Minnesota when I was a grad
student there, taught a class, after class one day he said
to me, "Scott, here's some advice: work with people
smarter than you."
Probably, the standard sort of vinegar and baking soda
experiment, right, where you throw the vinegar in the baking
soda and try and have it go a long way, to have it foam up.
But, however, my sons did stuff recently where they were like
shooting corks out of using Mentos and Coke which is this
century's version of the baking soda and vinegar; I think it's
way more powerful. We were able to shoot corks a couple of
100 feet in the yard which was great.
I think having control over what you do every day. I think
what's really great about it is, especially as social scientist,
you look out there in the world and you think where do I see the
problems, the challenges, the opportunities, what, where can I
help and you can go and you can move in that direction, move
your research in that direction and try and work on those
sorts of problems.
I think energy is the big one. I think the big difference
between a great paper and a bad paper is rarely the idea. And I
think it's – but it's actually taking the idea and really
pushing it. So it's often not the idea it's flushing it out;
it's working really, really hard.
And what I've been doing through literally hundreds of talks
around the country and around the world over the last five
years is talking to people about the scientific benefits of
diversity for systems. So if we get an eco-system that all is
the same species; there's always one species that's not
going to be as robust, as innovative, as productive as
ones that has multiple species. If it is a group of people that
all thinks the same way, they're not going to be as innovative,
as productive as one that contains people that think in
lots of different ways. So to get people to take this topic,
diversity, and take it out of two realms in which people
typically feel uncomfortable, sort of the moral realm, the
political realm, the legal realm, are like, whoa, that's –
I don't want to talk about it. And moving it to sort of
a science, fun, interesting, let's think about how
this works realm.
No, my wife a lot. No, I think that – she's a Political
Scientist at the University of Michigan and she was – she's
just, I think, a broader thinker than I am and, also,
a really good filter.
I think what's really surprising about the field of Complex
Systems because it's so interdisciplinary, you have to
really have an open mind and listen to what other people are
saying and overcome jargon and stuff like that, that it's,
actually, a happy fun light community of people. It's
really nice people. They're people who pass sort of a poke
test, everybody really gets along and it's fun to hang out
with people. Not a lot of big egos.
Assuming I've backed up my computer? Assuming that I've
backed up my computer then it would clearly be just a stack of
notepads which I've written stuff that I haven't completely
written out. If I'm on a plane and sitting somewhere I'll write
down some mathematics or bits and pieces of models then
there's just a stack of these things that are a project I'm
working on and that's –would just be lost, and so those –
that's the one thing I'd grab, and the art from my kids which
is right above it.
I would say primarily jazz and bad '80's rock. I mean, the
reality is I'm a rural kid from Michigan and so if Bob Seger
comes on the radio we crank it up unless my wife's in the car.
See the boys and I, we're all about Bob Seger.