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 Hmm. So however long you run Conway’s life game, it does not seem to arrive at [[rice pudding and income tax]]. Reductionists say “Ah, but that is just because the rules aren’t quite right, or we haven’t quite got the right initial configuration”. But then, they would say that.
-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.
+====complexity as an emergent property of algorithm====
+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 insufficiently-mapped, not-yet-properly-understood [[simple system]]s.
-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.
+This is like saying — maybe it ''is'' saying — an [[analog]] signal is no more than an insufficiently granular [[digital]] signal. That binary code isn't just a neat way of representing the (apparently richer and subtler) analog universe but that, if you dig deep enough, analog signal ''reduces'' to binary code. That ''binary code is all there is''.
-Remember, we are so far away from having enough data, information and processing capacity as for the difference between these dispositions to be, for all time, practically nil — but the distinction is fundamental nonetheless
+If this is right — [[Spartan if]], that — it has deep implications. For it means when we model the universe in binary code we are not just placing a convenient, subjective, all-too-human narrative on a [[hubbub]] of white noise  — telling  ourselves imaginative stories designed to help us get by, but whose “truth” value is beside the point — but that we are getting somehow converging upon the fundamental, transcendent ''essence of the universe''.
+Remember, we are so far away from having enough data, information and processing capacity as for the practical difference between these dispositions to be, for all time, nil — but the theoretical distinction between them is fundamental nonetheless.
+In both cases, complex systems present us with unpredictable, non-linear outcomes in edge cases. All that differs is
 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.”