The Simplest Things
I am lucky enough to live in the woods of New Hampshire, and right now the organic soup on the forest floor is gaining fresh new ingredients as the leaves fall. The soup is a feast for the bacteria, one of the simplest forms of life.
Thinking about bacteria led to thinking in turn about simplicity itself and the actual minimal viable versions of things. The boundaries where a thing stops being that particular thing if you remove one more piece.
Life at the Edge of Existence
The simplest form of life we can come up with is an example of the “minimal cell.” Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute created one in 2016 - an engineered bacterial cell called JCVI-syn3.0 - with just 473 genes. For context, an E. coli bacterium has about 4,300 genes. Humans run at around 20,000.
Apparently below 473 genes, the cell just… isn’t. It ceases to be life. There’s a hard floor to viability, a point where one less component means the whole system collapses. 473 sets the current practical benchmark for the smallest genome able to support an organism that grows and divides on its own.
Reading about this got me interested in other “simple things” and what is “enough” for them to still have meaning. Lots of domains have a ‘minimal cell’.
The Atoms of Meaning
In language, the morpheme stands as the smallest meaningful unit. Take the word “unhelpful” - three morphemes: “un” (not), “help” (assist), and “ful” (full of). You can’t break these down further without losing meaning (and becoming less helpful). “Un” isn’t “u” plus “n” - it’s atomic at the meaning level.
In programming, the simplest valid C++ program consists of just a single line:
int main(){}
That’s it. A function that does nothing, returns nothing meaningful, but satisfies the C++ standards requirement for an entry point. Remove any part - the return type, the function name, those curly braces - and you don’t have a program that compiles anymore.
In business, the simplest ventures you can start are service-based businesses using skills you already have and requiring little to no upfront investment. A consultant with an email address. A freelance writer with a laptop. No inventory, no storefronts, no venture capital rounds. Just you, a skill, and someone willing to pay for it.
In artificial intelligence, the simple reflex agent represents the most basic form. It maps current percepts directly to actions: if sensor says X, do Y. No memory, no model of the world, no planning. A thermostat is essentially a simple reflex agent. Temperature below 68°F? Turn on heat. Above 72°F? Turn it off.
Patterns in the Minimal
Each of these minimal forms share some fundamental principles that tell us something important about how complex systems actually work.
First, each demonstrates that modularity and composition enable complexity. The minimal cell combines genes that each handle specific functions - some for reproduction, some for metabolism, some for maintaining the cell membrane. Morphemes combine to build words, which build sentences, which build entire languages. That simple C++ program becomes useful when you add functions, which add to classes, which compose into applications. The solo consultant adds contractors, who become employees, who form departments. The reflex agent gains memory, then models, then planning capabilities.
Second, all four exhibit a threshold of viability - a point below which the system simply doesn’t function. The minimal cell needs all 473 genes or it’s just organic chemistry. A morpheme needs its full form or it’s just sounds. The C++ program needs at least that empty main function or the compiler rejects it. A business needs at least one person doing something someone will pay for, or it’s just a hobby. The reflex agent needs both sensors and actuators, or it’s either blind or paralyzed.
Finally, each minimal form points toward emergent properties - capabilities that arise from the whole but aren’t present in any individual part. Those 473 genes create self-replication, something none of them can do alone. Morphemes create meaning that transcends their individual semantic contribution. That minimal C++ program establishes a running process with memory allocation and system resources. The solo consultant creates value beyond their hourly input through relationships, reputation, and systematic knowledge capture. Even the simple reflex agent creates homeostasis - maintaining desired conditions without understanding what it’s doing.
Finding the Floor
As we’ve written about before, understanding complex things means finding the simple things within them. But there’s a corollary: understanding simple things means recognizing what can’t be removed.
Every system has its floor, its minimal viable configuration. When you’re building something new - whether it’s a product, a team, or a strategy - the question isn’t “how much can we add?” but “what’s the least we need for this to actually work?”
Start there. Then compose. Which raises an interesting question for your next project: what’s your ‘minimal cell’? What are the pieces you absolutely need before you can call it alive?
Find that floor first. Everything else can evolve from there.
https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/main_function.html