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THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS

a generative morphogenesis

Two chemicals — one that builds, one that dissolves — diffuse through a featureless medium until it breaks its own symmetry into form. This is Turing's morphogenesis, and it is also the Tao giving birth to the ten thousand things: activator and inhibitor, yin and yang, arising into pattern without being forced. As the field self-organizes it drives down its free energy — the rate at which it still surprises itself — settling into the shape that evidences it. Wound the pattern with your cursor and watch it navigate back toward its own form.

click and drag on the field — wound it, sow it, and watch it heal

the field, measured

free energy —
after Karl Friston — surprise, minimized
shannon entropy —
after Claude Shannon — uncertainty, in bits

the two forces

the ten thousand forms

the way