Systems work at lower complexity than their environment by necessity

Evidence

Generalization in general, and the building of trust in particular, assume the existence of systems as supports to their operation – systems which are themselves complex enough to be able to replicate certain processes of their environment within themselves. Of course, no system is capable of repeating or duplicating in its representations the real world in all its unfathomable complexity. Kantian metaphysics was stubbornly attached to this assumption since it abstracted ‘the subject’, or ‘consciousness’, as a kind of partner with the world and so raised it to the same level of complexity. What was overlooked was the decrease in complexity between reality and image, between world and intention, between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’, and so it failed to grasp the function of the image as the creation of order through the reduction of complexity. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 152

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core systems-theory premise: internal representations must always be less complex than their environment.
• XREF: The decline in complexity between world and internal image parallels Giddens’s account of how individuals rely on simplified institutional abstractions rather than full environmental knowledge.