The Human Complexity Ratio

Out there somewhere is a very important number. 

My information theory, "The Theory Of Complexity", August 2017, establishes that complexity, which is simply an amount of information, can be quantified, meaning that a number can be put on it. 

We usually describe complexity in subjective terms, such as "less complex than" or "much more complex than", but, if complexity is a volume of information, it must somehow be possible to put a quantitative number on it.

My information defines the quantity of information as the numerical value of the denominator when something is expressed as a fraction or ratio. Complexity is always expressed as a dimensionless whole number.

Now we know that we, our bodies and brains, are more complex than our inanimate surroundings, even though we are made of the same kinds of atoms. But if we are more complex than our inanimate surroundings, and complexity can be expressed as a number, then there must be some number that expresses how many times more complex we are than our inanimate surroundings.

Since complexity, the amount of information, is so primary to us, and since we interact with our surroundings in all we do, we should expect that this number would be very important and would show up in so many things that we do.

We can see this difference in the two complexity levels, our higher complexity level relative to the lower complexity of our inanimate surroundings, in many ways.

Having free will would not make any sense unless we were more complex than our surroundings. Free will means that we can be wrong and can make mistakes. But we can only be wrong about anything if there is not enough complexity in our surroundings to manifest every arrangement that our minds can conceive of. This can only mean that we must be more complex than our surroundings.

We can see this difference in complexity in what I will call "Identifiable Dimensions". With planets, for example, there is no identifiable top, bottom or, sides. The same is true of an ordinary rock, it does not have an identifiable top or bottom or sides.

But when we come to living things, beginning with plants, this changes. Unlike inanimate matter, such as a rock, a plant has a definable top and bottom. When a living thing has free will, unlike a plant, it will also have a definable front and back. 

This is the complexity of a thing, whether living or not, showing up as the number of definable dimensions. 

0 = inanimate non-living

1 = living but no free will, such as plants

2 = living and with free will

We have one dimension remaining that is undefined, our sides. We are essentially the same from one side to the other. If there was a being a major step above us in complexity we could expect that, unlike us, it would be different from one side to the other.

But while our lateral, side to side, dimension is undefined, there are a couple of interesting things about it.

First, our hands are our side-to-side feature that is the most guided by our brains, according to our will. But, since our brains are more complex than our bodies, this does impart a degree of definition to our lateral dimension. This definition shows up as handedness, with people tending to be either right- or left-handed.

Second, our internal organs are not quite symmetrically arranged from side-to-side. It is the organs involved in the processing of food and distribution of nutrients, the stomach, intestines, liver and, heart that break the side-to-side symmetry. But remember that all of our food is ultimately based on plants, and we saw that plants have one definable dimension. This break in our lateral symmetry of the digestive organs is the information of the definable dimension in plants showing up.

If our brains were not more complex than our bodies, we would not be able to recognize each other. We would be able to recognize another human being, but not to tell one from another.

We can tell that our bodies are more complex than our surrounding inanimate environment because, when a person dies, the environment breaks down the complexity of the body to it's simpler level.

The more complex something is, the more possibilities there are to go wrong. A medical textbook shows all that can go wrong with the human body and can be taken as a representation of how much more complex we are than our inanimate surroundings.

When we use technology, we are imposing our higher level of complexity on our inanimate surroundings. A cup, for example, may seem like a simple piece of technology. But to really understand a cup, it would be necessary to understand why we would make it. How we can get materials from the earth to make the cup, how we would hold the cup with our hands, why we would need to drink the water or other liquid that the cup holds.

We know that energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed in form. But, if this is true then why can't we reuse energy? It is because we are at a higher level of complexity than our inanimate surroundings, and when we use technology we are imposing our complexity on our inanimate surroundings. Once we use energy, it goes back to the surrounding environment, with it's lower level of complexity. We, with our higher level, cannot get it back in useful form.

So we know that we are more complex than our inanimate surroundings, and we know that complexity is quantifiable, meaning that we can put a number on it. The conclusion is this number, which I am calling the "Human Complexity Ratio", must be a very important number that we can expect to show up all around us.

Having a look at how this number might show up can help us to determine what it is. Following are some ways I have tried to do that.

The first thing that we might look at is the human body. If the body was homogeneous, the same throughout, it would be no more complex than it's surrounding inanimate environment. But that is not the case, the body has multiple organs that work together. We could expect that, the more separate organs the body has that work together, the more complex it will be. I think the number of major organs comprising the body must be equal to the number of times more complex the body is than the surrounding inanimate environment, which I define as the Human Complexity Ratio.

In my complexity theory plants are more intricate than the surrounding inanimate environment, meaning that they have more complexity per mass, but are actually no more complex, contain no more information, than the surrounding environment. That is why plants do not require free will. But we depend on plants for food and my thought is that the number of plants that we need for an optimum balanced diet, either directly or indirectly through meat, should equal the Human Complexity Number. Remember that much of the crops today have resulted from cross-breeding different plants, and the number would be the total number of those plants.

There is a temperature range on earth, from cold to hot. While we may be able to survive anywhere on earth, we are comfortable in only a narrow fraction of that temperature range. Since we have more complexity than the surrounding environment, this is what we should expect and the ratio of the total range to our comfort range is equal to the Human Complexity Ratio. This is about only the temperature range on earth, our environment, and not the range of temperatures in the universe, or down to absolute zero.

Humans can sense only a limited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that comes from the sun. As with the temperature range, this is what we should expect if we are more complex than our inanimate environment, and the ratio of the total solar spectrum to the visible light that we can see and the infrared that we can feel as heat is equal to the Human Complexity Ratio.

Whenever we make or build anything, we are imposing our higher level of complexity on our surrounding environment, and we can expect that the Human Complexity Ratio will show up there also. If a house is built, without financial constraints, my feeling is that the optimum number of rooms, without being too many, will be equal to the Human Complexity Ratio. We build houses to shield our higher complexity level from the surrounding lower complexity level, and we can expect that the house will reflect this complexity. This is why things that we make or build have a tendency to decay, break down or, malfunction. The lower level of complexity in the surrounding environment is trying to equalize the higher level that we have imposed on whatever we make.

If our houses reflect our higher level of complexity, but we have to be able to operate in each room of the house, obviously our houses must be a scale larger than us. But this scale difference should reflect the complexity difference. I got the idea that the ratio of the width of all doors of a house should average out to be the reciprocal of the Human Complexity Ratio, relative to the total circumference of the house. This, of course, only involves the first floor of the house.

We see and interact with our surrounding environment at our higher level of complexity. What I am thinking is that the number of broad classifications of labor and the number of broad classifications of education subjects should generally be a reflection of the Human Complexity Ratio.

The number that I finally decided on as the value of the Human Complexity Ratio is 18. This means that we are 18 times as complex as our surrounding environment, and the answer to all of the above examples is either 18 or 1 / 18.

There is an explanation of this Theory of Complexity, in a single posting, in "How Information Works", April 2019. Here is a link to it,

http://www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-information-works.html?m=0