Increasing Returns (Order) in a System is a Product of Disorder, Numerosity, and Feedback

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Disorder, in tandem with feedback, leads to order. Feedback occurs when information is transmitted and found by others, creating a cycle. This feedback, combined with disorder, results in the phenomenon of increasing returns, where random decisions influence subsequent decisions. Increasing returns in a system depend on disorder, feedback, and the involvement of a sufficient number of individuals.

In most of our episodes so far, we've taken a single concept and looked at it through the context of a single example. But in this episode and the next, we're going to pull back the camera to get a bird's-eye view of complexity science, by exploring the features common to all complex systems.

We're joined again by Karoline Wiesner, Professor of Complexity Science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam in Germany. In this episode, Karoline is going to explain four conditions that we see in complexity science: numerosity, disorder and diversity, feedback, and non-equilibrium. At the end of the episode, she's going to bring them all together to explain a central concept of complex systems: emergence.

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