Daniel Stein
New York University

Understanding the dynamical behavior of many-particle systems both in and out of equilibrium is a central issue in statistical mechanics. One question involves the relative importance of "nature vs. nurture" : that is, given a system with a random initial state evolving through a well-defined stochastic dynamics, how much of the information contained in the state at future times depends on the initial condition ("nature") and how much on the dynamical realization ("nurture")? I will discuss this question and present both old and new results for low-dimensional discrete spin systems.