[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

It has to be a topic of interest specifically for you, otherwise you’ll probably just get bored and stop halfway through. For me it was exercise science. It was a super fascinating and mind-opening journey for me from skeletal muscle contractions to how the body burns calories, to how to program weight training exercises, how to make my own diet program and throwing away all the hype around it, etc.

I can imagine that for others it might be just straight up neuroscience, or something zoology if you like pets, or physics. The idea is to try to see these natural phenomena as running code, and to think of how nature designed and wrote the code to make it all work. I can see how the approach sounds absurd, but maybe video game developers would be able to relate to what I’m saying since (I assume) they do a lot of world-building and have to make simulations of real-world objects.

[elcapitan]

No, doesn't sound absurd at all - there are even explicit connections between this type of "organic" complexity and the software world, like evolutionary algorithms and agent based models, for example. A while ago, I looked into the topic of complexity in a general way and found a biology book called "Structures of Complexity: A Morphology of Recognition and Explanation" by Rupert Riedl, which is very in-depth on the biological approach to complexity. In fact a little to in-depth for quick extraction of practical concepts.

But looking at something personal and concrete like exercise makes total sense, thanks!