Ray wrote:
> Complexity is not a description of a state of nature but speaks to
> the competence of the human mind observing it. Nothing is complex
> if you understand it, comprehend its structure and know how to use
> it.
"Complexity" is now a technical term. If you use it in the quotidian
sense meaning "complicated and not easy for me to understand" in a
context where the technical sense might be understood, you now have to
use some semantic flag to indicate that intended meaning.
The nature of "complexity" in the technical sense is that a system
that is complex has so very many parts, so very many relationships
between parts and so many possible state transitions that it is
intrinsically, provably not predictable, not, in any conventional sense,
fully understandable.
Admittedly, the human brain is the most complex thing -- in the
technical sense -- that we have to study and we have, as yet, no
understanding of how (what we cavalierly call) mind or consciousness
is engendered by it. So we can't strictly rule out the possibility
that, at least in some cases where the right observations can be made,
a mind can gain some menaingful grasp of a complex (technical sense)
system that may seem, from a computational standpoint, nearly
miraculous.
That is the reason why I find it incorrect to scornfully dismiss a
whole raft of stuff that falls under the heading of "spiritual" or
"mystic", even though I regard the vast majority of such stuff as, at
best, gratifying wanking and at worst, fraudulent or self-deceptive
bogosity.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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