The vast majority of counterintuitive behaviours shown by complex systems are attributable to some combination of the following five sources: paradox/self-reference, instability, uncomputability, connectivity, and emergence. With some justification, these sources of complexity can be thought of as surprise-generating mechanisms, whose quite different natures lead to their own characteristic type of surprise. A brief description of these mechanisms is described below, followed by a more detailed consideration of how they act to create complex behavior. Paradoxes typically arise from false assumptions, which then lead to inconsistencies between observed and expected behavior. Sometimes paradoxes occur in simple logical or linguistic situations, ...(100 of 5547 words)
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