"While many questions about quantum mechanics are still not fully resolved, there is no point in introducing needless mystification where in fact no problem exists. Yet a great deal of recent writing about quantum mechanics has done just that." (Murray Gell-Mann,"The Quark and the Jaguar", 1994)
"A measure that corresponds much better to what is usually meant by complexity in ordinary conversation, as well as in scientific discourse, refers not to the length of the most concise description of an entity (which is roughly what AIC [algorithmic information content] is), but to the length of a concise description of a set of the entity’s regularities. Thus something almost entirely random, with practically no regularities, would have effective complexity near zero. So would something completely regular, such as a bit string consisting entirely of zeroes. Effective complexity can be high only a region intermediate between total order and complete." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?", Complexity Vol 1 (1), 1995)
"Clearly, complex adaptive systems have a tendency to give rise to other complex adaptive systems. […] The appearance of more and more complex forms is not a phenomenon restricted to the evolution of complex adaptive systems, although for those systems the possibility arises of a selective advantage being associated under certain circumstances with increased complexity." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?", Complexity Vol 1 (1), 1995)
"Crude complexity is ‘the length of the shortest message that will describe a system, at a given level of coarse graining, to someone at a distance, employing language, knowledge, and understanding that both parties share (and know they share) beforehand." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?" Complexity Vol. 1 (1), 1995)
"In contemplating natural phenomena, we frequently have to distinguish between effective complexity and logical depth. For example, the apparently complicated pattern of energy levels of atomic nuclei might easily be misattributed to some complex law at the fundamental level, but it is now believed to follow from a simple underlying theory of quarks, gluons, and photons, although lengthy calculations would be required to deduce the detailed pattern from the basic equations. Thus the pattern has a good deal of logical depth and very little effective complexity." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?", Complexity Vol. 1 (1), 1995)
"Crude complexity is ‘the length of the shortest message that will describe a system, at a given level of coarse graining, to someone at a distance, employing language, knowledge, and understanding that both parties share (and know they share) beforehand." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?" Complexity Vol. 1 (1), 1995)
"In contemplating natural phenomena, we frequently have to distinguish between effective complexity and logical depth. For example, the apparently complicated pattern of energy levels of atomic nuclei might easily be misattributed to some complex law at the fundamental level, but it is now believed to follow from a simple underlying theory of quarks, gluons, and photons, although lengthy calculations would be required to deduce the detailed pattern from the basic equations. Thus the pattern has a good deal of logical depth and very little effective complexity." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?", Complexity Vol. 1 (1), 1995)
"The second law of thermodynamics, which requires average entropy (or disorder) to increase, does not in any way forbid local order from arising through various mechanisms of self-organization, which can turn accidents into frozen ones producing extensive regularities. Again, such mechanisms are not restricted to complex adaptive systems." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?", Complexity Vol 1 (1), 1995)
"Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the 'unreasonable effectiveness' of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics." (Murray Gell-Mann, [TED talk] 2007)
"You don't need something more to get something more. That's what emergence means. Life can emerge from physics and chemistry plus a lot of accidents. The human mind can arise from neurobiology and a lot of accidents, the way the chemical bond arises from physics and certain accidents." (Murray Gell-Mann, [TED talk] 2007)
“What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have.” (Murray Gell-Mann)
"Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the 'unreasonable effectiveness' of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics." (Murray Gell-Mann, [TED talk] 2007)
"You don't need something more to get something more. That's what emergence means. Life can emerge from physics and chemistry plus a lot of accidents. The human mind can arise from neurobiology and a lot of accidents, the way the chemical bond arises from physics and certain accidents." (Murray Gell-Mann, [TED talk] 2007)
“What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have.” (Murray Gell-Mann)
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