Sipperabilia

Progress in Science is like Evolution in Nature: Ideas are born, selected for, recombined, and mutated, there being vastly more ways for brainchildren to die out than to survive. And yet, as in Nature, all ideas -- both extinct and viable -- are valued, if not necessary, members of the vast meme pool driving scientific progress.

Sipper's Law of Academic Research

The academic activity is predominantly one of cerebral stimulation intended for one's own intellectual satisfaction -- mental masturbation, as it were. Surprisingly, unlike that other kind, beautiful offspring are often born.

Sipper's First Law of Designing a Complex System

Make it as simple as possible...

Sipper's Second Law of Designing a Complex System

... and then simpler.

Lawgiver's addendum: The research literature of the past few decades is rife with examples of systems designed from simple elemental components to exhibit some form of complex behavior. In my opinion not a single one of these has broken through what I call the Complexity Barrier: the appearance of truly novel (and, somehow, unarguably complex) phenomena. Often the designer will attempt to overcome the system's limitations by infusing more "raw" complexity into the basic bauplan, wishfully hoping that "interesting," "useful," or "good" complexity will somehow emerge. Alas, emergence, often evoked almost reverently, is neither a panacea, nor a magic wand, and the additional complexity simply transforms a garbage-in-garbage-out scenario into one of complex-garbage-in-complex-garbage-out. Surmounting the complexity barrier, which I believe to be one of today's Big Questions, is closely related to what I've dubbed the KYS OFF Challenge in my book Machine Nature.