The world is getting exponentially more complex – here’s how we navigate it
Living organisms, our planet and even the entire universe are getting ever more complex with time. “Complex” doesn’t just mean “complicated”: it means that the parts of a system interact in ways that give rise to properties that can sometimes be quite surprising. Whenever a certain threshold is crossed, a transition seems to occur in which some complex systems, such as ants or stars, develop the ability to construct further complex systems, such as ant colonies or certain chemical elements. On Earth, organisms across kingdoms of animals, plants and microbes can also come together to form complex ecosystems. And we humans construct extremely complex social, institutional and technological systems. So complexity can generate more complexity. Complexity can also develop the ability to manage, control and navigate the complexity it has constructed. We, for example, manage, control and navigate the complex economic systems and traffic systems we have constructed. I...
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