In late December 2025, SFI External Professor Wendy Carlin was appointed the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British ...

Biologists at UCLA used a natural experiment during the COVID-19 lockdowns to study the effects of human activity on urban ...

In his biography of Elon Musk, historian Walter Isaacson describes a game of Texas Hold ‘Em poker in which Musk went all in — on every hand. “Isaacson uses the anecdote to show that Elon Musk is a ...

The simulation hypothesis — the idea that our universe might be an artificial construct running on some advanced alien computer — has long captured the public imagination. Yet most arguments about it ...

Over the past 40 years, the field of microeconomics has gone through a revolution in real-world applications, yet the theoretical models taught in Ph.D. coursework have been slow to catch up. In a new ...

When scientists test algorithms that sort or classify data, they often turn to a trusted tool called Normalized Mutual Information (or NMI) to measure how well an algorithm’s output matches reality.

Every task we perform on our computer — whether number crunching, watching a video, or typing out an article — requires different components of the machine to interact with one another. "Communication ...

Since the origins of modern philosophy and poetry, imagination has been a technical term for the human ability to cognize in images and thought combinations that reconfigure our memories or immediate ...

In October, the International Society for Artificial Life recognized several SFI researchers and co-authors with the ISAL Award for Outstanding Publication of 2024. The award celebrates the paper ...

An Introduction to Ergodicity Economics is a new textbook that draws on physics to re-examine traditional economic theory. It begins with flipping a coin. And a hypothetical gambit. Imagine you were ...

From Beowulf to Pride and Prejudice to the classic sitcom Friends, all stories share a common purpose: to convey knowledge about how to navigate the world. “Stories are everywhere,” says SFI External ...

For most of human history, large societies have drawn clear lines between people who belong to the in-group and those who do not. These lines determine who is recognized, protected, or granted status, ...