ComplexLab

Where can terrorism develop with greater ease? Terrorists need to hide. For this reason they thrive in high-entropy environments, such as failing or rogue states, where there is little social structure. It is in highly complex societies (doesn’t mean developed) that terror groups find geo-political sanctuaries. High complexity comes in many forms:

1. Little structure but high entropy
2. Much structure, low entropy
3. Much structure, high entropy

These are the combinations. Terror groups generally prefer high entropy-dominated complexity because of the Principle of Incompatibility: higher complexity implies lower precision. This means that hunting them down - essentially an intelligence-driven exercise - is difficult because of lack of precise information. Because of the fact that globally complexity is quickly increasing, it will be increasingly more difficult to identify terror groups especially in ambiguous countries, i.e. those which harbour terorrists but are willing to close an eye. The problem with Western countries is that they are becoming more permissive and tolerant, leading to an overall loss of structure in favor of entropy. In underdeveloped countries it is almost impossible to create new social structure, hence it is entropy that causes the increase of complexity. In the West, the more intricate social structure is being eroded by loss of values and permissivism. The result: in both cases an increase in complexity. Following the above logic, we can state that:

• High complexity is necessary (but not sufficient) to lead to terrorism.
• Terorrism in an almost “obvious” consequence of a highly complex world.
• The Principle of Incompatibility and terrorism are intimately linked.

It appears that when a highly heterogenous and mobile society/civilization complexity reaches certain complexity thresholds, the emergence of terrorism is almost guaranteed. In other words, once we cross the red line, terrorism is inevitable. Because of the Second Principle of Thermodynamics (i.e. entropy cannot decrease) the only way to stop terror is via drastic reduction of personal freedom at global level. Let’s not forget that personal freedom is consequence of the amount of entropy in a given society.

Any traumatic event - such as an extinction spasm, a stock market crash - is accompanied by sudden changes in complexity. Wiping our a keystone species (hub) in an ecosystem can bring biodiversity to its knees and in most cases doesn’t require a huge meteorite. 9/11 may be seen, metaphorically, as a meteor strike which crippled the global economy for a few years. In fact, the DJIA index fell from around 10700 to about 8500 in a relatively short time. At the same time, the complexity of the market (based on the DJIA index) fell from 11.2 to appriximately 6.1.

Given that there is a relationship between complexity gradients and traumatic events (conflicts, acts of terror, phase changes in general) it appears that complexity monitoring may be an interesting means of anticipating such events, and, in the least of cases, my help understand under which circumstances they emerge. One can of course track people’s e-mails, collect passanger information on airline flights (but why not busses, trains, cruise ships, etc.?) track credit card transactions, etc. etc. There is a multitude of such fine-grain indicators of one’s evil intentions and monitoring them all - and on a global scale - is practically (and democratically) impossible. What we need, in fact, is none of this hair-splitting, but a more holistic (interconnected) coarse-grain look at the world and to establish a global complexity map. Managing this complexity is the next step. Ontonix uses data collected by the CIA to produce global Process Maps of the world, as well as maps for specific regions. The idea is to determine in which regions complexity growth is most pronounced. It is these areas that are great candidates for failing states.