Steve Yegge's favorite essay in 3 years: adaptive complexity as the supervalue
Steve_Yegge · x · 2026-10-12
Steve Yegge calls this his favorite essay in three years. Joshua Fost's long-form piece Adaptive complexity as a supervalue argues that what humans—and any sufficiently sentient creatures—really want isn't happiness, health, freedom or esteem, but adaptive complexity: a Goldilocks-like balance of complexity in life, not too stressed and not too bored.
The essay first defines complex systems and adaptive complexity, then probes the standard answer of happiness and well-being, challenges the idea that the well-being of conscious creatures is the ultimate basis of value, argues that all listed values are shadows of adaptive complexity, and closes with an evolutionary-psychological hypothesis for why this preference is universal. Yegge admits the framing is easy to pick apart but finds it useful for explaining phenomena like toxic fan bases.
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