What is complexity?
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Reference
Gell-Mann, M. (1995). What is complexity? Complexity, 1: 16–19.
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Abstract
What is complexity? A great many quantities have been proposed as measures of something like complexity. In fact, a variety of different measures would be required to capture all our intuitive ideas about what is meant by complexity and by its opposite, simplicity. Some of the quantities, like computational complexity, are time (or space) measures. They are concerned with how long it would take (or how much capacity would be needed), at a minimum, for a standard universal computer to perform a particular task. Computational complexity itself is related to the least time (or number of steps) needed to carry out a certain computation. Other suggested quantities are information measures, referring, roughly speaking, to the length of the shortest message conveying certain information. For example, the algorithmic information content (or AIC) of a string of bits is defined as the length of the shortest program that will cause a standard universal computer to print out the string of bits and then halt. As measures of something like complexity for an entity in the real world, all such quantities are to some extent context-dependent or even subjective. They depend on the coarse graining (level of detail) of the description of the entity, on the previous knowledge and understanding of the world that is assumed, on the language employed, on the coding method used for conversion from that language into a string of bits, and on the particular ideal computer ...
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http://www.santafe.edu/~mgm/Site/Publications_files/MGM%20116.pdf
