Human behavior is too complex to be predictable
Human behavior is too complex to be predictable, especially by ourselves, because we are oblivious to the detailed complexity of what’s happening within us.
When we say that human behavior is unpredictable, we are right, because it is too complex to be predicted, especially by ourselves. Our intense sensation of internal liberty, as Spinoza acutely saw, comes from the fact that the ideas and images which we have of ourselves are much cruder and sketchier than the detailed complexity of what is happening within us. We are the source of amazement in our own eyes. —Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
- see also: we are collaborative compound organisms, unaware of the scale at which we are collaborating with the world
- see also: self-organizing systems of vast complexity are the way of the world
- not unrelated: play could be the basis of physical reality, which tracks more with the complexity within and without us than a theory of a mechanical universe