It’s not that there’s some true essence of complexity, which humans are failing to reach due to provincial interests. It’s that we define the word “complexity” the way we do because of those provincial interests and pragmatic concerns, and there’s no true essence at all.
If aliens use the word “xlorp,” and say that humans and puddles of water are about equally xlorp, and suppose we translate “xlorp” as “complex”, then what’s happening is not that aliens have a different perspective on the true essence of complexity, it’s that humans and aliens are using the word complexity to refer to different things.
That seems to be a rather general response that doesn’t feel very relevant to my point. Anyway, if you agree that the human intuition of complexity depends on “provincial interests” I was trying to point out, then you should also agree that OP doesn’t reflect those interests in his complexity measure, right?
Also, some concepts are more natural than others. If we agree that the intuitive complexity is not very natural, we may still want to model it for some purposes, but it also makes sense to abandon it in favor of a more natural concept.
It’s not that there’s some true essence of complexity, which humans are failing to reach due to provincial interests. It’s that we define the word “complexity” the way we do because of those provincial interests and pragmatic concerns, and there’s no true essence at all.
If aliens use the word “xlorp,” and say that humans and puddles of water are about equally xlorp, and suppose we translate “xlorp” as “complex”, then what’s happening is not that aliens have a different perspective on the true essence of complexity, it’s that humans and aliens are using the word complexity to refer to different things.
That seems to be a rather general response that doesn’t feel very relevant to my point. Anyway, if you agree that the human intuition of complexity depends on “provincial interests” I was trying to point out, then you should also agree that OP doesn’t reflect those interests in his complexity measure, right?
Also, some concepts are more natural than others. If we agree that the intuitive complexity is not very natural, we may still want to model it for some purposes, but it also makes sense to abandon it in favor of a more natural concept.