ISIS Opening Address: Complexity versus Simplicity

Abstract

There are a lot of different concepts to cover all the meanings that we attach intuitively to the word complexity, and to its opposite simplicity. There is one kind of complexity that corresponds best to what is meant by the word complexity in ordinary conversation, and in most scientific dialog. It's what I call effective complexity. Roughly, effective complexity refers to the length of a very precise description of the regularities of an entity. Not the features that are treated as random or incidental, but the features that are treated as regularities.

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