Template:Conway and complexity: Difference between revisions

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 But in the first case, any heuristic that helps us make sense of the system ISAs good as any other. There is no “[[epistemic priority]]” between competing heuristics: all that matters is what works best, judged by whatever criteria you happen to bring to the table. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the other, there ''is'' such an epistemic priority. The most granular binary code is the closest to the truth. This gives the holders of that view grounds for insisting it is preferred, by everyone, over every other heuristic.
-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.”
+====If algorithms are complex, everything is complex — or nothing is====
+Conflating simple algorithms with complex systems undermines the explanatory power of complexity theory. The distinction between [[simple]], [[Complicated system|complicated]] and [[Complex system|complex]] systems is meaningful. They are now just points along a continuum, without hard boundaries between them. 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.”
 Ex-post facto rationalisation to comply with your rules is rather like the work normal scientists do in a research programme, of course. It is a form of narratisation.