Self-Organized Criticality: Self-Organized Complexity? The Disorder and ``Simple Complexity'' of Power Law Distributions

Abstract

The disorder and a simple convex measure of complexity are studied for rank ordered power law distributions, indicative of criticality, in the case where the total number of ranks is large. It is found that a power law distribution may produce a high level of complexity only for a restricted range of system size (as measured by the total number of ranks), with the range depending on the exponent of the distribution. Similar results are found for disorder. Self-organized criticality thus does not guarantee a high level of complexity, and when complexity does arise, it is self-organized itself only if self-organized criticality is reached at an appropriate system size.