The Exploratory Study on the Relationship Between the Failure of Distance Metrics in High-Dimensional Space and Emergent Phenomena

This paper presents a unified framework, integrating information theory and statistical mechanics, to connect metric failure in high-dimensional data with emergence in complex systems. We propose the “Information Dilution Theorem,” demonstrating that as dimensionality ($d$) increases, the mutual information efficiency between geometric metrics (e.g., Euclidean distance) and system states decays approximately as $O(1\mathrm{/}d)$. This decay arises from the mismatch between linearly growing system entropy and sublinearly growing metric entropy, explaining the mechanism behind distance concentration. Building on this, we introduce information structural complexity ($C(S)$) based on the mutual information matrix spectrum and interaction encoding capacity ($C^{\mathrm{\prime }}$) derived from information bottleneck theory. The “Emergence Critical Theorem” states that when $C(S)$ exceeds $C^{\mathrm{\prime }}$, new global features inevitably emerge, satisfying a predefined mutual information threshold. This provides an operational criterion for self-organization and phase transitions. We discuss potential applications in physics, biology, and deep learning, suggesting potential directions like MI-based manifold learning (UMAP+) and offering a quantitative foundation for analyzing emergence across disciplines.