Simplicity is Complex

According to author Jayce O’Neal, simple –well – isn’t. That’s an interesting thought. Are my efforts to streamline my life ultimately self-defeating? Da Vinci thought simplicity was the ultimate sophistication, which philosophy might be the inspiration for the iLife and Cloud computing, but seems somewhat at odds with what I’m trying to do.

All right, so I came across the term in a martial arts context – used there to illustrate the fact that what a Grandmaster makes look simple the student finds incredibly complex. I think, though, that the idea may have a wider application.

The general process of streamlining reminds me of Langton’s Ant (a computer model that has been used to illustrate the limitations of relying on a Theory of Everything). At first, the simple set rules of the module create a simple pattern, and then the cycle appears to generate chaos before eventually settling into a pattern – is this what da Vinci and O’Neal were on about?

Langton’s Ant and other models like it demonstrate (graphically. Try putting it into YouTube.com) that a simple rule, a simple system can lead to complex, chaotic patterns, and that chaos is the entropic state of the universe, so any order we impose is by definition complex, thus simplicity as we understand it is an illusion because it stands against the tendency of the universe toward disorder, and so the very order we impose in streamlining anything (much less our lives) is only simple in appearance, not in conception or execution.

However mentally M C Escher this may be as a concept, it doesn’t change my desire to simplify – ok, streamline – my life.