 These two central premises for soft teleology are quite substantive, however. Premise (i) presupposes that (iii) there is a general and comprehensive measure of simplicity or complexity that could be applied to natural and cultural processes in order to claim an overall tendency of development towards increased complexity; in particular, such a measure of complexity should make it possible to offset decreases of complexity with respect to one parameter by increases in complexity relative to another parameter. Premise (ii) presupposes that (iv) species survival can be taken as an indication of some aspect that meaningfully can be connected to the axiology of progress. Whether the optimism of the soft teleological position is justified thus ultimately depends on the tenability of claims (iii) and  (iv).[27]  The fact that the premises for soft teleology have direct implications for our current debate about transhumanism endows the old question of the directionality of reality with unexpected practical relevance for the regulation of artificial intelligence and robotics.