
Plectics - The study of simplicity and complexity (1996) - hhs
https://www.edge.org/conversation/murray_gell_mann-chapter-19-plectics
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AstralStorm
Fancy name. Last I've seen this it was called cybernetics and is still alive.
(Also complexity science. It is sort of a branch of both cybernetics and
information science. No, not just CS.)

------
gooseus
Opening quote:

> J. Doyne Farmer: The first thing that makes me respect Murray is that unlike
> all his contemporaries, including Feynman, Weinberg, Hawking, and all the
> other particle physicists, he saw that complexity is the next big problem.

Hawking in 2000[0]:

> I think the next century will be the century of complexity.

So I guess he came around to Gell-man's thinking eventually!

What I don't understand is why we aren't engaging with complexity more openly
and directly. The limitations and challenges imposed by constantly increasing
complexity loom before us and are manifested in the global economic,
ecological, and political problems we're seeing.

My opinion is that these limitations and the challenges of continuing to
progress despite increasing complexity are what make up this Great Filter that
explains the Fermi Paradox.

You can't become multi-planetary (let alone multi-solar) without an amazing
set of complex technical systems that requires a stable organizational system
to develop and produce over a long period of time. So first you need to solve
the problem of how to maintain stability in an enormously complex
organizational system long enough for these kinds of technical systems to
emerge.

Complexity is an ever-growing albatross around our collective necks and I feel
very alone when I'm arguing against any number of far-flung beliefs, like in
trans-humanism and AGI fears/hopes, and can't seem to explain how complexity
is the regulating phenomenon that makes what these people think is a perpetual
exponential curve of progress into the same sigmoid curve that we observe
whenever any other organism finds a way to exploit their environment.

[0] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-
wavefunctio...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-
wavefunction/stephen-hawkings-advice-for-twenty-first-century-grads-embrace-
complexity/)

~~~
hhs
Good points, I also agree with your note, _" What I don't understand is why we
aren't engaging with complexity more openly and directly. The limitations and
challenges imposed by constantly increasing complexity loom before us and are
manifested in the global economic, ecological, and political problems we're
seeing."_

What would push complexity research forward? In my view, a greater
concentration of empirical works would give this field more attention.

There's a useful YouTube channel by the Santa Fe Institute that broadcasts
research in this field. Last month, there was a good presentation by Srividya
Iyer-Biswas.

Based on the Santa Fe Institute's channel: _" Iyer-Biswas and her team have
reported predictive scaling laws governing the stochastic growth and division
of cells, and have developed a theory that reveals the emergence of a
scalable, cellular unit of time. Her current work involves extending these
results to thermodynamics of organismal computation, time-dependent phenomena
involving cellular decision-making, and laws that dictate complex biological
and social phenomena."_

If interested, the video is here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1mWE8Zyi0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1mWE8Zyi0).

~~~
retzkek
The Santa Fe Institute also offers free online courses on complexity-related
topics (e.g. fractals, chaos, nonlinear systems, etc) at
[https://www.complexityexplorer.org/](https://www.complexityexplorer.org/)

~~~
hhs
Definitely, that's a useful place to get a grasp of complexity topics, thanks
for sharing.

