Simply Complexity: A Clear Guide to Complexity Theory

Real-world Complex Systems contain collections of objects whose complicated overall interactions feature feedback and memory.

you have created a time-series which is chaotic.

to a traffic jam, which is the traffic equivalent of a market crash.

Even if a system has the same setup – in our case, the same systematic intern, the same rule for changing shelf, the same number of files and the same number of shelves – there can be a wide range of outputs, or in other words a wide range of dynamical behaviors. One such example is Chaos, but there are others.

Even though it is encouraging to have shown that relatively simple rules can give such phenomena, it in no way explains how a Complex System comprising many interacting parts, manages to produce such phenomena.

But one thing is for sure: there is a natural tendency for something that is ordered to become disordered as time goes by. In contrast, something that is disordered is highly unlikely to order itself without any additional help.

We have just uncovered a so-called fixed-point attractor of the system’s dynamics.