Seth Lloyd Quotes

A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.

In little localized pockets, the universe is capable of building some beautiful complexity.

If there is no randomness in the universe, then what do we mean by chaos?

It's a lot of random situations that combine in a certain volatile form and create a bigger-than- the-whole situation that nobody could have predicted.

Economists must always be prepared for surprises: they find many in trying to find order in the universe of their study.

If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

The world is deterministic, but it's chaotic and emergent.

And so from that, I've always been fascinated with the idea that complexity can come out of such simplicity.

When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.

Life is chaotic and unpredictable. If a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies

At the edge of chaos, unexpected outcomes occur. The risk to survival is severe.

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.

Disorder can play a critical role in giving birth to new, higher forms of order.

Both chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.

Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.... In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butter- fly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge

I think the next century will be the century of complexity.

Reductionism is not the right viewpoint for everything, and it certainly won't explain the relationship between the brain and the mind. This is because of a feature known as emergence. When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something greater than the sum.

If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.

The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.