, then halt.” That program has about the same length as
s itself. Therefore,
s is random if there is no shorter way than that to describe it.
K(s), in other words, is about equal to the length of
s:
K(s) ≈ L(s). This definition of randomness has nothing to do with probability. Indeed, Kolmogorov believed that the idea of information was more fundamental than the idea of probability” (Schumacher 2015, pp. 231-2).
By multiplying meanings, culture-society raises randomness and uncertainty. The increasing complexity of human activities is a race against uncertainty. By complicating their activities, humans eliminate the uncertainty that prevents them from satisfying their needs, but in doing so they create even greater uncertainty. To eliminate this new uncertainty, they must complicate their activities even more. This phenomenon is called the “Red Queen’s Race”:
“This concept, that all progress is relative, has come to be known in biology by the name of the Red Queen, after a chess piece that Alice meets in Through the Looking-Glass, who perpetually runs without getting very far because the landscape moves with her. It is an increasingly influential idea in evolutionary theory. The faster you run, the more the world moves with you and the less you make progress” (Ridley 2003, p. 18).
The race against uncertainty meant that traditional culture-society gradually reached the technological, organizational and psychological limits of simple self-reproduction. When it went beyond these limits, it either collapsed, disintegrated and lost complexity (which often happened) or had to change its foundations.
Evolutionary rationality and the limits of traditional thinking
Herbert Simon once pointed out that theorists of human behavior tend to go to extremes in their interpretations of rationality: economists tend to exaggerate the capabilities of the human mind, and psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists tend to downplay them, emphasizing the role of motivations, emotions and culture (cf. Simon 1957, pp. 1-2):
“Traditional economic theory postulates an ‘economic man,’ who, in the course of being ‘economic’ is also ‘rational.’ This man is assumed to have knowledge of the relevant aspects of his environment which, if not absolutely complete, is at least impressively clear and voluminous. He is assumed also to have a well-organized and stable system of preferences, and a skill in computation that enables him to calculate, for the alternative courses of action that are available to him, which of these will permit him to reach the highest attainable point on his preference scale” (Simon 1957, p. 241).