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Template:Conway and complexity: Difference between revisions
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The idea that [[complexity]] is merely an [[emergent]] probability of a simple [[algorithm]] is quite the piece of eliminative [[reductionism]]. Eliminative in that it eliminates complexity as discrete state. It converts all [[complex]] systems to no more than an insufficiently mapped understood simple systems. | The idea that [[complexity]] is merely an [[emergent]] probability of a simple [[algorithm]] is quite the piece of eliminative [[reductionism]]. Eliminative in that it eliminates complexity as discrete state. It converts all [[complex]] systems to no more than an insufficiently mapped understood simple systems. | ||
This is like saying — maybe it ''is'' saying —an [[analog]] signal is just an insufficiently granular [[digital]] signal. That digital code isn't just a handy way of representing the analog universe but that, if you did deep enough, ''binary code is all there is''. This | This is like saying — maybe it ''is'' saying —an [[analog]] signal is just an insufficiently granular [[digital]] signal. That digital code isn't just a handy way of representing the analog universe but that, if you did deep enough, ''binary code is all there is''. This has deep implications. For it means when we model the universe we are not just placing a convenient, subjective, all-too-human narrative on information — pragmatically telling ourselves stories that are useful and help us get by, but whose “truth” value is beside the point — but that we are getting somehow closer to the actual, fundamental, transcendent essence of the universe. | ||
Remember, we are so far away from having enough data as for the difference between these dispositions to be practically nil | |||
This undermines the powerful distinction between [[simple]], [[Complicated system|complicated]] and [[Complex system|complex]] systems — they are now just points along a continuum, without hard boundaries between them — and undermines the explanatory power of complexity theory. It is really just saying, “well, in this complex system, ''something'' will happen; we don’t know what, but as and when it does we will be able to rationalise it as a function of our rules, by deducing what the missing data must have been.” | This undermines the powerful distinction between [[simple]], [[Complicated system|complicated]] and [[Complex system|complex]] systems — they are now just points along a continuum, without hard boundaries between them — and undermines the explanatory power of complexity theory. It is really just saying, “well, in this complex system, ''something'' will happen; we don’t know what, but as and when it does we will be able to rationalise it as a function of our rules, by deducing what the missing data must have been.” | ||