I'd like to propose a corollary to Gall's Law. Actually it's a self-proving tautology already contained with the term "lifecycle." Any system that lasts longer than a single lifecycle oscillates between (reducing to) simplicity and (adding) complexity.
My bet is on the long arc of the universe trending toward complexity... but in spite of all this, I don't think all this complexity arises from a simple set of rules, and I don't think Gall's law holds true. The further we look at the rule-set for the universe, the less it appears to be reducible to three or four predictable mechanics.
I think this site doesn’t capture Gall’s Law correctly, and your observations are closer to the original.
Gall notes that the universe naturally trends toward complexity and unintended consequences and therefore complex designs should be assumed to already be full of these unintended consequence “bugs”. He proposes that systems should be designed:
- with less scope to reduce unintended consequences,
- with less rigidity to allow for workarounds when unintended consequences arise, and
- to take advantage of “momentum” to reduce the required energy to use the system correctly. In other words make the right thing the easy thing, remembering that the easiest thing to do is nothing, thus systems will halt if operators get too busy with other tasks.)