Non-fractal realities don’t have this property. For example, animals are not fractal. So a simpler level-by-level deconstruction works. This is Lao Tze’s butcher, taking reality apart at joints elegantly. Disassembly without fractal chopping. Our normal thinking is like this.
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Under normal conditions, we tend to use “stack” thinking: a set of single-level, mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (MECE) mental models. We ignore fractal error. We move abstraction levels as necessary, trusting state to stay well-behaved.
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Stack structures can be navigated with lightweight stacks in the computing sense. This is because they follow a finite ontogeny recipe.
But large-scale *growing* realities tend to be fractal in macro structure. When you try to navigate them with stack logic, things fall apart.
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My gloss on that is: under normal conditions stack thinking in a fractal world causes fractal map-territory errors that self-correct via foxes and hedgehogs serving as checks and balances on each other. That’s complex systems homeostasis.
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But in weird conditions, they compound fractally, collapsing at all levels. The widening-gyre effect. Hedgehogs become part of problem by getting destructive. Foxes give up in frozen inaction. The system gets ungovernable. Self-correction homeostasis breaks down, all unravels.
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The solution is to “think entangled, act spooky” as I recently argued. To arrest and reverse a fractal collapse you have to think in fractal-native scale-free ways. How do you do that in practice? I don’t know yet. Working on it.
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This was really good, and I think also a revealing test for anybody who’s not sure if they’re a hedgehog or fox
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Kinda thought my wife might’ve been a hedgehog but realizing via this that we’re both foxes
GIF
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Weird, I always thought I'm a hedgehog too but freezing in inaction fearing I might accidentally chop up some subtle varieties is a waaay too common strategy for me. What do I do now?
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Yeah I’m not 100% confident in my analysis, so it could be an imperfect correlation


