More Complexity == More Desire == More Problems

In this section, I elaborate on one of the sub-hypotheses of the article. My conjecture is that however simplistic a solution might be, it will still add complexity to the final resulting system. I have not studied physical chemistry formally, so I am not fully aware of how this works, but on a very high level though, the second law of thermodynamics basically says that the resulting entropy (which is a measure of randomness / complexity) after any reaction is greater than before. I believe that this phenomenon supports my conjecture to some extent. This increased complexity then encourages us to inculcate more desires related to the prevailing system and these desires eventually turn into problems for us to solve. Apart from the desires, I believe the increased complexity per se introduces problems that might even have detrimental effects on the surroundings or other individuals.

A concrete example of this sub-hypothesis could be the invention of Cars. The primal human beings did not have any means of transport and used their own movement for getting from point A to point B. At some point in time, a wheel was invented and thus a wheel-cart, which was itself quite a remarkable invention at that time. Even at this rudimentary stage, we can notice that the complexity of the transportation system has increased by a very large extent (from legs to carts being pulled by horses or other animals). But, we (humans) didn’t stop here. We went leaps and bounds ahead and fast forwarded to Automobiles. Today’s typical car is a million times more complex than the original wheel-cart. Surprisingly, do we stop here? No! We now want cars that can drive themselves. And very soon, we would want cars that could fly! This examples greatly bolsters the first part of the sub-hypothesis (more complexity == more desire). For the second part actually, the explanation is quite straight forward. Consider the wheel-cart for instance; the sheer demand for these wheel-carts caused the humans to manufacture them at a very rapid rate which in turn began the rapid depletion of the natural resources. Till this day, we do not have a substantial fuel alternative to the fossil fuels used to power our cars. And, not to forget the problem of the pollution caused by the modern day cars.

Even with the advent of the self-driving cars, some very serious issues have already been highlighted by the community. One of these being the issue of accountability in the event of accident. I.e. if a self-driving car malfunctions and (god forbid it) ends up taking the life a fellow human (some cases have already happened), then who should be held accountable for it? Should it be all the programmers, researchers and supervisors who were responsible for deploying this autonomous driving system? Or should it just be treated as another machine failure which resulted in this unfortunate event? There is no chance that such problems could have been foreseen earlier. But does it stop us from building these systems? No, because as intelligent beings, we strive for more and more intricate systems which ultimately make our lives easier. Well, it doesn’t end here. Who knows what other problems these self driving cars may give rise to! But, we know for sure that as a community (scientific or otherwise) we will just add them to our backlog of problems and gradually solve them.

Another of my colleagues Fatemeh Karimi Nejadasl conjectures that this increase in complexity will keep on happening only till the point of the first anomaly! After this point, the entire system would just collapse (reducing the complexity of the system) on itself taking us back to the primitive ages. I partially agree with this hypothesis that the point of anomaly is impending and would surely come. But I believe (perhaps because I am a very optimistic person) that this anomaly wouldn’t take us back, but would rather force us to think of a completely lateral solution to our problems and bring a dawn of an entirely new age. A Utopian world devoid of all problems altogether.