How complex is a clockwork in comparison?

[Jannes]

In this ranking of how complex an object actually is, where would you put a clockwork? I think there is a point to be made to put it anywhere — no manmade object comes even close to the intelligence to natural things like a biological thing like a leaf (when you look at the cellular level) or maybe even a rock. So that could be reason to put it very low. On the other hand it expresses a kind of meta intelligence — the object in a way is an expression of awareness of reality. But is this moreso a secondary attribute, or is it somehow backed into an object in an actual way?

edit: I put the pure materials of the clockwork next to the rock as a guess. Is the whole clockwork put together more complex then just the material by itself because it is a machine which is created through a relationship with/ a consciousness of reality? 

 

Its a real practical question btw. I want to view targets for remote viewing and this is one question I want to ask "how complex is the target?". 

Edited 3 hours ago by Jannes

[LastThursday]

Interesting question. I'm struck by the idea of self-assembly and copying. A shell, leaf and a brain assemble themselves from matter over time, they grow. A pebble or stone is ground down from bigger lumps. All leaves, shells and brains of a particular type are similar, stones are randomly sized and shaped.

A clockwork doesn't assemble itself and is more like a stone. But it does get assembled by something that is self-assembled (a person), so you could call it an epiphenomenon of nature. Its complexity is way less than even a shell, although, you could also call a shell an epiphenomenon. But, there could potentially be many identical copies of a clockwork.

A stone could have a complex mix of constituents, but the arrangement is not orderly. I'm guessing a clockwork is mostly brass or steel, possibly ruby for bearings, maybe gold for trim, and quartz for glass; maybe that's fewer ingredients than a stone or pebble? 

Edited yesterday at 02:37 PM by LastThursday

[Jannes]

On 2.6.2026 at 4:37 PM, LastThursday said:

Interesting question. I'm struck by the idea of self-assembly and copying. A shell, leaf and a brain assemble themselves from matter over time, they grow. A pebble or stone is ground down from bigger lumps. All leaves, shells and brains of a particular type are similar, stones are randomly sized and shaped.

A clockwork doesn't assemble itself and is more like a stone. But it does get assembled by something that is self-assembled (a person), so you could call it an epiphenomenon of nature. Its complexity is way less than even a shell, although, you could also call a shell an epiphenomenon. But, there could potentially be many identical copies of a clockwork.

A stone could have a complex mix of constituents, but the arrangement is not orderly. I'm guessing a clockwork is mostly brass or steel, possibly ruby for bearings, maybe gold for trim, and quartz for glass; maybe that's fewer ingredients than a stone or pebble? 

Thats not what I am asking. The materials of the clockwork dont matter. Of course if a clockwork is made out of more complex material it is on the whole more complex. But what I am asking is, is a clockwork more complex because it is a clockwork aka is a machine? Or you could say it like this, are all the materials of the clockwork put together more complex then the materials of the clockwork lying there by themselves?

The idea being that a clockwork captures reality in a way. People experience the day and night cycle on the planet and then built a watch capturing that process. You need to be pretty conscious to experience the night and day cycle and a clock expresses that higher level of consciousness. All machines express higher consciousness in a way. A fork expresses consciousness of reality because the design is created in relation to the outside world. Same for a machine gun, a table, etc. ...

Does that expression of higher consciousness make the watch or any machine inherently more complex then just the material alone or is is just us giving meaning to it?

If it does make the thing inherently more complex by how much? Materials have all kind of complex and amazing traits, a cell is more complex then anything humans built. But also despite that humans dominate the earth with their unholy machines, because their machines are formed with a lot of consciousness of reality in mind. A clock captures the day and night cycle on earth as a complex trait vs lets say the bending properties of a tree trunk. The machinery behind the bending properties of the tree trunk is probably more complex then the machinery in the clock, but they capture completly different levels of consciousness of reality. If that counts for anything. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Jannes

[Schizophonia]

After the stone.

It's complex yes but infinitely less so than a living being.

[Jannes]

12 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

After the stone.

It's complex yes but infinitely less so than a living being.

And yet "infinitely less complex" things can beat infinitely more complex things. 

[Schizophonia]

1 minute ago, Jannes said:

And yet "infinitely less complex" things can beat infinitely more complex things. 

But it was the human brain that generated this mousetrap; tens of billions of neurons and all the other cells in your body that allowed you to make/buy it, position it, understand how the combination with cheese could attract the mouse, understand why it was necessary, etcetc eheh. 

[Jannes]

11 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

But it was the human brain that generated this mousetrap; tens of billions of neurons and all the other cells in your body that allowed you to make/buy it, position it, understand how the combination with cheese could attract the mouse, understand why it was necessary, etcetc eheh. 

Yes.

But can a clear line be made? Even if I created the mouse trap and then leave it, the intelligence continues to work on its own.

Where does a human begin and end? A part of human is his making. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Jannes

[Jannes]

3 minutes ago, Jannes said:

Even if I created the mouse trap, the intelligence continues to work on its own.

If I created a super advanced machine which would rule over a natural ecosystem, lets say I created a super AI on earth which should rule over all organic beings and would leave the planet, I think at some point organic beings will always win over machines if machines dont get new input because organic beings can always adapt in unforseeable natural ways. 

[Breakingthewall]

52 minutes ago, Jannes said:

are all the materials of the clockwork put together more complex then the materials of the clockwork lying there by themselves?

An atom is much more complex than a clockwork, with the gluons being created and destroyed inside and all that mess of the fields interacting that endures 10 follow of 30 zeros being stable