A driven dissipative system is one where a source 'drives' the system away from equilibrium and increases the system's sample space, and a sink returns it back via a 'dissipative' process, reducing the sample space again. This interaction between the source and sink in a driven dissipative system results in complex phenomena such as turbulence or currents. In the field of complex adaptive systems, these are often associated with self-organized criticality.
Examples
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Pot of water on a stove (without continuously applied heat, the water cools to room temperature)
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Prompting a sufficiently weak simulator (without repeated prompting, the simulator results in mode collapse)