...Cant read the article but I can say that the areas we work in at my research company are related to some of the work at Santa Fe - related but different and we think much more useful. Areas tangential to their current and past research avenues are quite interesting - and are not published - and are as I said very interesting and useful. Who did you work with there and what is the point of your colleagues quoted remarks ?
The way to think about it in mathematics is analogous to the way we think about some types of quantum behaviour in physics. In the latter case we talk about macroscopic quantum phenomenna. From a certain vantage point these can be thought of as a type of scale invariance - or violation depending upon your point of view. The same idea operates here ...