We seem to place a special faith in the value of predictions. Horoscopes, palm readings, almanacs, betting on sports and political results, the AEX index of the day after tomorrow, the climate of the future, the course of a pandemic, the end of times, we can't get enough of them. This is not entirely surprising as evolution has equipped us with a powerful brain of which the prefrontal cortex integrates information and makes predictions reasonably successfully. A brain with which we have also been able to build computers that can do all this even better. That creates expectations. Yet it goes wrong endlessly. The Titanic sank, Brexit came, and so did Trump, and a "flu" unexpectedly threw our health care system, economy, and social life totally out of whack. Why are we so often wrong and is there hope for improvement? In this lecture, Peter is happy to take you into the non-linear world of everyday life and make you part of his personal crystal ball.

Peter Sloot is professor of Complex Adaptive Systems at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). With a background in Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science and a PhD at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, he researches new ways to predict the behavior of complex systems. Complex systems are composite systems of which the whole is more and different than the sum of the parts. We see them all around us; in migrating birds that organize themselves into flocks, in our immune system, in social and opinion networks, in the dynamics of epidemics, but also in the structure of our cities and society. Sloot uses new computational and mathematical methods to investigate the way these complex systems organize themselves. In 2010, he received the prestigious Leading Scientist career award. In 2014, he was given the resources and manpower to set up the Complexity Institute in Singapore, and in 2016 he became the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the UvA, an interdisciplinary hub to study "wicked problems. Sloot is an enthusiastic science communicator.

Each Paradiso lecture lasts one hour and there is time at the end of the lecture to ask questions.

The Paradiso lectures are organized in collaboration with Verstegen & Stigter.