Chapter 146 24.1 How to create something out of thin air

Nature created something out of nothing. First a hard, rocky planet; then life, lots and lots of life.First barren hills; then mountain streams dotted with fish and cattails and red-winged blackbirds.First the acorns, then a forest of oaks. I think I can do that too.First a hunk of metal; then a robot.First a few wires; then a mind.First some ancient genes; then a dinosaur. How to create something out of nothing?While nature knows this trick well, we don't learn much just by observing her.And much more has been learned from failures to build complexity, and from combining the lessons of those failures with the modest successes in simulating and understanding natural systems.So, from the frontier of computer science, from the edge of biological research, from the corner of all kinds of strange interdisciplinary experiments, I summed up the nine laws of creation that manipulate nothing out of nothing:

distributed state bottom-up control Cultivate increasing returns modular growth edge maximization Courtesy error Do not seek the best goal; but seek many goals seek lasting disequilibrium change by itself These nine laws are organizing principles, and their application can be found in various systems such as biological evolution and "sim city".Of course, I am not saying that they are the only laws of creation out of nothing; however, the nine laws summed up from a large number of accumulated observations in complexity science are the most extensive, clearest, and most representative general principles.I believe that as long as you stick to these nine laws, you will be able to succeed like a god.

Distributed state.The consciousness of the hive, the behavior of the economy, the mind of the supercomputer, and the life within me are all distributed over many smaller units (which themselves may also be redistributed).When the sum of the parts adds up to more than the parts, that extra part (that is, being out of nothing) is distributed among the parts.Whenever we get something out of nothing, we always find it derived from many interacting smaller parts.The wonders we find most interesting—life, intelligence, evolution—are all to be found in the soil of large distributed systems. Bottom-up control.When everything in a distributed network is connected to each other, everything happens simultaneously.At this point, pervasive and rapidly changing issues circle around an emerging central authority.Overall control must therefore be accomplished in parallel by actions that are interconnected at their lowest level, rather than by centrally directed actions.Crowds can guide themselves, and in fields of rapid, large-scale heterogeneous change, only groups can guide themselves.To create something out of nothing, control must rely on an underlying layer of simplicity.

Cultivate increasing returns.Every time you use an idea, a language, or a skill, you strengthen it, solidify it, and make it more likely to be reused.This is known as positive feedback or snowballing.Success breeds success. This law of social dynamics in the New Testament is famous for it: "The more you have, the more you get".Anything that changes its environment to add value to itself plays a game of increasing returns.Also, all large and persistent systems play such games.This law is at work in economics, biology, computer science, and human psychology.Life on Earth changes the Earth to produce more life.Confidence builds confidence.Order creates more order.The rich get richer.

Modular growth.The only way to create an efficient complex system is to start with an efficient simple system.Attempts to immediately enable highly complex organizations—such as intelligence or market economies—without nurturing them are doomed to failure.Integrating a savannah takes time - even if you have all the tiles in your hands.Time is used for each part to validate itself against all other parts.Complex systems emerge from the gradual assembly of simple modules that function independently. Maximize the edges.The world emerges from heterogeneity.The unified entity has to adapt to the world through seismic transformations from time to time, some of which are sure to kill it.On the other hand, a multi-component entity, adapting to the world in a thousand small changes every day, is in a state of perpetual but by no means fatal tumult.Differences often occur in distant borders, suburbs, hidden corners, chaotic turning points, and isolated clusters.In economic, ecological, evolutionary, and institutional modules, healthy margins speed their adaptation, increase their resilience, and are almost always a source of innovation.

Courtesy is wrong.Cleverness can only succeed for a while, and it will not work when everyone can play it.Standing out from mediocrity depends on new gadgets or opening up new areas.But it's hard to tell the mistakes from the mistakes of a traditional approach, novelty, or field process.Even the most ingenious acts of human genius are ultimately an act of trial and error. "To change what has been done is part of God's plan," wrote the dreamy poet William Blake.Mistakes, whether random or deliberate, must be an integral part of any creative process.Evolution can be seen as the management of systematic errors.

Do not seek the best goal; but seek many goals.Simple machines can operate efficiently, but complex adaptive machines cannot.There are many dominant devices in the complex, but no single device receives dedicated service.Rather than trying to optimize any one function, making most functions "good enough" is the way to survive in large systems.For example, an adaptive system must weigh whether it should expand known successful paths (optimize current strategies), or allocate resources to explore new paths (thus wasting energy trying inefficient approaches.) In any complex entity , with so many hybrid drivers, it's impossible to figure out how it really survives.Survival is a multi-directional goal.Most living organisms are multi-directional, so they are blunt variants that happen to work, rather than precise manifestations of proteins, genes, or organs.It's not elegant to make something out of nothing; as long as it works, it's awesome.

Seek lasting disequilibrium.Neither constancy nor relentless change is conducive to creation.Successful creation is like a beautiful piece of jazz, which must strike a balance between its smooth routine and out-of-place notes.Equilibrium is death.However, if a system cannot maintain stability at a certain equilibrium point, it is almost equivalent to triggering an explosion and dying quickly.Moreover, no object is both in balance and out of balance.Something is in constant disequilibrium—a state of continuous surfing, perpetually on the verge of never stopping and never falling.Making a home on the fluid frontier is still the goal of creation and all false gods.

Change itself.Changes are architectable.This is also the practice of large and complex systems: integrate change.When multiple complex systems are constructed into a megasystem, each system begins to exert its own influence until finally changing the structure of other systems.That is to say, if the rules of the game are established from the bottom up, the interactive forces at the bottom may change the rules of the game during operation.Over time, the rules that make the system change change themselves.Evolution—the often-talked-about theory—is the theory of how entities change over time.A deeper evolution—as formally defined as it may be—is about how the rules that change entities change over time.To make the most out of nothing, you must have the rules of self-change.