VON-FOERSTER'S CONJECTURE—TRIVIAL MACHINES AND ALIENATION IN SYSTEMS
Moshe Koppel, Henri Atlan, Jean‐Pierre Dupuy · International Journal of General Systems · 1987
In this paper, we demonstrate how the proper modelling of general systems allows us to address the question of how the actions of many independent but inter-connected agents contribute to a global behaviour. In particular, we apply the techniques of information theory to probabilistic automata to formalize and prove what has come to be known as the „Von-Foerster conjecture”. In the first part of this paper we describe Von-Foerster's conjecture in its historical context. In the second part we restate it using formal definitions and we prove it.