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SUMMARY:Collective awareness: A vision of a new economics and risk reducti
 on - Professor Doyne Farmer\, University of Oxford
DTSTART:20170508T170000Z
DTEND:20170508T183000Z
UID:TALK71758@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jens Steffensen
DESCRIPTION:Science gives us a collective awareness that turns unknown unk
 nowns into probabilities and helps us deal with risks and avoid catastroph
 ic scenarios. It is worth distinguishing three levels of collective awaren
 ess\, that involve understanding the external environment\, our effect on 
 the environment\, and our collective effect on ourselves. This lecture wil
 l focus on the hardest of these — our collective effect on ourselves —
  and on economics in particular. The economy underpins almost everything w
 e do\, and economic fluctuations cost the world many tens of trillions of 
 dollars\, yet the budget for polar research is greater than that for econo
 mics. Why is there no large-scale effort to better understand the economy?
  Prof Farmer will argue that our lack of making a serious effort and our l
 ack of progress is due to fundamental problems with the current culture of
  economics\, and macroeconomics in particular. He will present an alternat
 ive vision of the economics of the future\, with a much stronger emphasis 
 on our ability to simulate the world. This will give us a better day-to-da
 y understanding of the economy\, but most importantly\, it will allow us t
 o better use science to think about the big problems in our future\, such 
 as climate change\, the digital economy\, and the overarching changes to h
 uman existence that the bio\, info\, nano and cognitive technologies of th
 e future will bring.\n\nAbout the speaker\n\nProf J. Doyne Farmer is Direc
 tor of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic 
 Thinking at the Oxford Martin School\, Professor in the Mathematical Insti
 tute at the University of Oxford\, and an External Professor at the Santa 
 Fe Institute.\nHis current research is in economics\, including agent-base
 d modelling\, financial instability and technological progress. He was a f
 ounder of Prediction Company\, a quantitative automated trading firm that 
 was sold to the United Bank of Switzerland in 2006. His past research incl
 udes complex systems\, dynamical systems theory\, time series analysis and
  theoretical biology.\n\n(Photo credit: http://www.jct600.co.uk/blog/futur
 e-of-motoring/what-will-motoring-look-like-70-years-from-now/)
LOCATION:Winstanley L.T.\, Trinity College
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