I saw a really cool video by Veritasium recently about randomness and information theory that I was reminded of by Galanter's article. In it, he talks about the effective complexity of the universe, although he doesn't use that term. After watching the video, I think that the universe is in a pretty good sweet spot between crystal lattice and complete randomness. Maybe because we evolved at this time in the universe, we are well suited for this stage, and that's why I think we're at a pretty good point. But since the universe is trending from the Big Bang (simple) toward total entropy (complex), I think our ability to create effectively complex things might come from how effectively complex the universe is right now.
The Problem of Intent: Why is the artist working with and ceding control to generative systems?
I've thought about this before, and I think randomness is crucial to progress. I think that most original ideas, whether they be inventions or artistic pursuits, come from accidents or random circumstance. Usually we can only work off what we already know, and that usually only can create things we already know. New information, just like Veritasium says in the video above, comes from random chance, because information is randomness at a certain level.
For this reason, I am ceding control to a partially random system. Hopefully this can lead to new insight that I would never have gotten through work that I fully control.