Our intuition balks at the immense numbers and the endless variety generated by combinations. Like the king in the Persian story, it seems impossible to us that from the combination of simple things, so many other things and such complexity can be born. It is for this reason, I believe, that it seems inconceivable that things as complex as life, or our own thought, can emerge from simple things: because we instinctively underestimate simple things. We never think they are capable of much. Numbers generated by grains of wheat and a chessboard surely cannot empty all the granaries in the
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