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#27 - Sean Carroll - The Enigma of Complexity
Win-Win with Liv Boeree
File size will be larger for cream mixing then separated cream.
Modeling cream mixing into coffee illustrates concepts of entropy and complexity. When cream and coffee are separate, they represent low entropy and high organization. Mixing introduces high entropy yet retains simplicity, highlighting the varying states of a system. In fundamental physics, the conservation of information indicates that the description of a closed system remains consistent over time. This leads to the need for coarse-graining observations, which simplifies the complex molecular interactions into manageable approximations. The concept of 'apparent complexity' emerges, defined through coarse-graining and algorithmic compression. Kolmogorov complexity is introduced as a measure of the shortest program that can reproduce a string of numbers, showcasing how structure can reduce complexity. However, Kolmogorov complexity is ultimately uncomputable due to the halting problem, emphasizing practical implications like the efficiency of compression algorithms used in file formats such as JPEG.
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