It’s been a week since the news was announced that there wouldn’t be the App Camp For Girls program in Summer 2019 and that the board of directors would be exploring options for furthering the mission of the organization by other means. I said I would write a proper blog post once I had a chance...
Sorry to hear that they’re moving away from their initial set up. I’m curious which direction they go next. I’m hoping they don’t shut down all together.
I’m curious about the difference in structure with this and Steam:Coders and how the set ups could be franchised.
In this episode, Haley talks with physicist, complexity scientist, and MIT professor, Cesar Hidalgo. Hidalgo discusses his interest in the physics of networks and complex system science and shares why he believes these fields are so important. He talks about his book, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies, which takes a scientific look at global economic complexity. Hidalgo also shares how economic development is linked to making networks more knowledgeable.
Quotes from this episode:
“Thinking about complexity is important because people have a tendency to jump into micro explanations for macro phenomenon.” — Cesar Hidalgo
“I think complex systems give you not only some practical tools to think about the world, but also some sort of humbleness because you have to understand that your knowledge and understanding of how the systems work is always very limited and that humbleness gives you a different attitude and perspective and gives you some peace.” — Cesar Hidalgo
“The way that we think about entropy in physics and information theory come from different traditions and sometimes that causes a little bit of confusion, but at the end of the day it’s the number of different ways in which you can arrange something.” — Cesar Hidalgo
“To learn more complex activities you need more social reinforcement.” — Cesar Hidalgo
“When we lead groups we have to be clear about the goals and the main goal to keep in mind is that of learning.” — Cesar Hidalgo
“Everybody fails, but not everyone learns from their failures.” — Cesar Hidalgo
“Learning is not just something that is interesting to study, it is actually a goal.” — Cesar Hidalgo
A solid interview here with Cesar Hidalgo. His book has been incredibly influential on my thoughts for the past two years, so I obviously highly recommend it. He’s got a great description of entropy here. I was most surprised by his conversation about loneliness, but I have a gut feeling that’s he’s really caught onto something with his thesis.
I also appreciated about some of how he expanded on learning in the last portion of the interview. Definitely worth revisiting.
As I get amped up for the start of Mike Miller’s Fall math class Gems and Astonishments of Mathematics, which is still open for registration, I’m even more excited that he’s emailed me to say that he’ll be teaching Category Theory for the Winter Quarter in 2019!!
Haley Campbell-Gross