Geoffrey West on COMPLEXITY

Why HN readers recommended it

HN commenters recommend it as an accessible introduction to scaling laws and to why cities keep growing while companies and organisms eventually die.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

FQxI

Topic

scaling laws and complexity

Format

talk

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

8

Recommendation years in dataset

2014–2018

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Even if you calculated as embodied energy instead of just looking at the energy spent directly on a task? Because a large part of the "inefficiency" of living creatures is physical maintenance of the body. If that is included for machines as well, I'm not …

• This is why the largest animals in the world live in the sea: it's a better cooling system! Also, for those interested to know more, I recommend looking up Geoffrey B. West's stuff on complexity. It mentions the same things as this article and puts …

• For a great, accessible intro talk on this topic, check out Geoffrey West's "On Complexity": [VIDEO]