On the Positive Role of Noise and Error in Complex Systems

Noise and error are usually considered to be disturbances negatively affecting the behavior of a system. Nevertheless, from a systemic perspective, taking into account openness and incompleteness of complex systems, noise and error may assume a creative, constructive, and positive role in that they are a source of novelty that can trigger the reorganization of the system, the growth of complexity, and the emergence of new meaning. Examples of this phenomenon can be found in evolutionary phenomena driven by affordances, the formation of new attractors in dynamic systems responding to external perturbations, and improvisation in music. We argue that it is possible to identify general properties that enable the positive effect of noise and errors in complex systems, namely, multilevel organization, redundancy, incompleteness, and criticality. These properties play a major role in living systems and can guide the design of robust and adaptive artificial systems.