In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonder of Complex Systems

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And therefore if for any reason whatsoever someone needs a comment from a Nobel laureate, they ask me. In so doing, he removes the practice of science from the confines of the laboratory and brings it into the real world. A bunch of Italian physicists concocted a gizmo of numerous synced cameras, each taking stills of a murmuration. But since the book was supposed to be about complex systems, from a man who won a Nobel Prize for his insights, I eagerly ploughed onward.

This is why the murmuration seems to stretch into a new shape - starlings along the edges with no other bird beside them are what change its overall shape. Maybe because there were more popular books on physics than mathematics, which is so abstract that it’s difficult to describe. He explains the way in which he is able to to see connections hidden from others simply because of the multiplicity of the projects he has worked on over time. One Michelin-starred chef even commented: “Let’s leave cooking to the chefs while physicists do experiments in their lab. When you have multiple minima and the ball keeps on rolling and the dynamics change as a function of time.In so doing, he removes the practice of science from the confines of the laboratory and into the real world. Parisi knows, knew or at least acknowledges pretty much everyone who ever won a Nobel Prize in Physics (He won his in 2021). This makes it easier to swing towards new directions, and makes it easier for individual birds to know their place in the scheme. You stare at the seat back in front of you, stifle a sigh, and try to disassociate — all the while hoping your neighbor catches a clue and has some Excel sheets to poke around in.

It is important to understand how scientific consensus is achieved, how individual discoveries become validated by the scientific community. For example, images produced by AI should have some kind of signature so that people can understand if they are real or fake, to prevent us from losing contact with reality. The last three chapters were very good - "Metaphor in Science", "How Ideas are Born", and "The Meaning of Science. When he finally gets back to entertaining the reader with what ought to be fascinating observations, it is about theoretical constructs, nothing like murmurations. He goes on endlessly about the three phases of water and the physics of phase transition, for example.

If citizens and politicians do not trust science, we will move inexorably in the wrong direction, and the struggle against any number of global ills—global warming, infectious disease, hunger and poverty, the depletion of the planet’s natural resources— will fail. Earlier this year, he suggested that when cooking pasta, one should turn the burner off after adding the noodles to boiling water. The most beautiful and profound irony is that he found multiple equilibria by pursuing multiple equilibria … through time. In this enlightening book, Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work to show us how.

Studying the movements of these communities, he has realized, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kinds—collections of everything from atoms and planets to other animals, such as ourselves. This would limit energy consumption, thus saving money for energy-depleted Italians and reducing overall carbon emissions in the process.You begin by writing about your study of starling murmurations, which seems an unusual subject for a physicist to tackle. We had a meeting of academics at the G7 in Paris in 2019, and one thing that we were very worried about was weapons systems controlled by AI. Richard Feynman’s lectures taught me to see the static particle apart from and as part of the dynamic wave. In between, there are chapters on Italian physicists he knows, his own history, which began in university in the keystone year of 1968, which he explains in detail, and anecdotes about other physicists and school in Italy. I am more willing than most people to talk with a stranger on an airplane but can understand wanting to avoid it.