Law of Complexity - Consciousness

Description

1. Doctress Neutopia:

"Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Law of Complexity/Consciousness says that there is a tendency in matter "to complexify upon itself and at the same time to increase in consciousness." We see this complexity tendency in nature evolving from inanimate matter, to plant life, to animal life, to human life, moving in consciousness from the geosphere, to the biosphere, to the noosphere, the thinking-envelope around the world where brain waves are transmitted through our technology. In each stage, life increases in consciousness with the ability to reflect upon itself. Teilhard suggests that life has been on a spirally path that is moving toward a critical threshold what he termed the Omega Point where humanity reaches the highest point of complexification (socialization) and consciousness. In 1971, John David Garcia expanded the idea of Teilhard's Omega Point. He realized that to reach the Omega Point required not only increased intelligence, but more importantly, increased ethics.

Soleri calls this driving evolutionary movement of people into cities the Urban Effect which has now drawn most of the world's people into urban areas. When people live in densely populated areas the exchange of ideas and knowledge intensifies causing an acceleration of evolution. His formula for evolution is Miniaturization + Complexity = Duration, what he calls the MCD paradigm. I've added to his formula to make it more clear how intertwined our cultural evolution is to designing a new container allowing for greater social cooperation, synergy and interdependence.

* Complexity = Internet = Interdependence

* Miniaturation = Arcology = Synergy

* Duration = Sustainability = Cooperation

The new miniaturized form of the city does more with less, allowing the social organism of humanity the possibility of surviving for a longer time frame than was possible in its old form of civilization. An example of the Urban Effect can be seen through invention of the computer.

In the 1970's computers were as big as large rooms, but as computer chips grow in power and speed, they miniaturized, becoming not only smaller but faster and more complex, doing more with less, that is. With computer chip miniaturization came the use of desk top computers which made computer technology accessible to the average person, expanding its realm of consciousness. Our current MCD process of the Urban Effect is intimately connected with the world-wide computer network in co-creating the next stage of human civilization. Cyberspace is the place where carbon-based humans are merging with silicon-based intelligence in a way that has the potential to be liberating for all.

Now on the verge of artificial intelligence becoming self-aware, its complexity factor is exponential."

(http://www.realitysandwich.com/12th_hour_arcology)

2. Clement Vidal et al. :

"The new scientific worldview that forms the basis of the Third Story can be summarized as the self-organizing universe (Jantsch, 1980; Swimme & Tucker, 2011; Turchin, 1977). It sees the universe as evolving step by step from simple elements to complex, intelligent organization. The steps include the subsequent emergence of space and time (the Big Bang), particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, minds, and societies. That means that cosmological evolution is directional: there is a sense of “progress” in that the future is qualitatively different from the past.

The direction of progress can be summarized by the law of complexityconsciousness, formulated by the evolutionary philosopher-scientist Teilhard de Chardin (Steinhart 2008; Teilhard de Chardin 1966; 1959b). This is not an actual “law”, because the new worldview is not deterministic, but rather an observation of a longterm trend: as systems evolve, they tend to become both more complex and more conscious of their surroundings. This trend can be explained by the fact that some outcomes are much more likely than others. This follows from our understanding of evolution as a combination of variation, which is typically random or at least nondirectional, and natural selection, which eliminates the unfit variations but keeps the fitter ones. Thus, selection’s preference for certain outcomes over others produces an implicit direction for evolution, an “arrow” pointing towards greater fitness (Heylighen 1999; Stewart 2000; Vidal 2023b).

This follows from the well-known principle of the survival of the fittest.

However, the “fittest” here should not be interpreted—as it often is—as the “strongest”, the most “dominant”, or the most “selfish”. A system is fit when it is adapted to its environment. That environment consists of other systems with which the first system interacts, typically by exchanging resources. Fitting in therefore means having good relationships with these others. Good relationships are characterized by minimal conflict or friction, and maximal synergy. Synergy means that the different systems survive better together than on their own (Corning, 1998, 2003). Their interaction is of the “win-win” type, which is also known as “positive sum” (Wright 2001): the total fitness achieved when acting together is larger than the one they would achieve when acting each on their own."

(https://cris.vub.be/ws/portalfiles/portal/281521855/Third_Story-working_paper-submitt.pdf?)