Affiliation:
1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Campus of Cesena, Università di Bologna, I-47521 Cesena, Italy
2. European Centre for Living Technology, I-30123 Venice, Italy
3. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies (DiSTeBA), Università del Salento, I-73100 Lecce, Italy
Abstract
Noise and error are usually considered to be disturbances negatively affecting the behavior of a system. Nevertheless, from a systemic perspective, taking into account openness and incompleteness of complex systems, noise and error may assume a creative, constructive, and positive role in that they are a source of novelty that can trigger the reorganization of the system, the growth of complexity, and the emergence of new meaning. Examples of this phenomenon can be found in evolutionary phenomena driven by affordances, the formation of new attractors in dynamic systems responding to external perturbations, and improvisation in music. We argue that it is possible to identify general properties that enable the positive effect of noise and errors in complex systems, namely, multilevel organization, redundancy, incompleteness, and criticality. These properties play a major role in living systems and can guide the design of robust and adaptive artificial systems.
Funder
Italian Ministry of University and Research titled Or
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