---
title: "Critical Instability"
description: "The claim that living systems keep themselves at \"the edge of chaos\" so that tiny inputs (a whisper; a moth's random jink) can redirect the whole organism's future."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/critical-instability"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/critical-instability"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Critical Instability

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/critical-instability), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

The claim that living systems keep themselves at "the edge of chaos" so that tiny inputs (a whisper; a moth's random jink) can redirect the whole organism's future. For Agüera y Arcas it is one of the two ingredients of free will — the other being high-order theory of mind including a model of oneself — and it is selected for because being unpredictable to predators and rivals is itself a survival strategy. Combined with Turing-style injected randomness for sampling counterfactual futures, it is what makes "a model of the future determine what actually happens" without violating physics.

## Appears in

- [What Is Intelligence?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/what-is-intelligence) (2025-09-23)
- [What is Intelligence? (Lecture)](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/wii-film) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._