> Given the apparent complexity of the universe, it still amazes me that that number of symbols is so small. Yeah, except, maybe the number of symbols isn't so

> Given the apparent complexity of the universe, it still amazes me that that number of symbols is so small. Yeah, except, maybe the number of symbols isn't so small. The number of symbols needed to model very simple relationships is small, like the relationship between two gravitational bodies. Now add a third body, and yes, in some sense this system is still described by the simultaneous relationship between pairs of bodies, but it's not really usable in that form. You've got to explode it, and you've got to do a lot more calculation. I'm not totally confident here. I do have some intuition that the Navier–Stokes equations, for example, fully describe the motion of a very complex phenomenon in a very small number of symbols. But then if they require so much computation to actually apply, is my intuition wrong that this really counts as a full description of the system? Is there a distinction between running the equations and running a simulation? And what exactly is the distinction between running a simulation and setting up the system and just seeing what happens? It's definitely different, but I'm not so sure it's this amazing compression that it's made out to be.