Conversation

1st order: healthcare surge, supply chain disruption 2nd order: economic slump, demand collapse 3rd order: large infrastructure load imbalances 4th order: large opportunistic exploits like oil war 5th order: normal accidents frequency increase 6th order: extended outage gangrene
10
85
Trying to low-order model the system stability with a dozen or fewer moving parts. I think people smarter than me are falling into the trap of modeling things with intractably high-dimensional fidelity. It alleviates comprehension anxiety but exacerbates the control problem.
1
18
You want global governance to focus on all the biggest system modes, while those are still controllable. Small-scale things will break all over the place as a result and people will get mad but they can adapt, sort of. But if the big modes go out of control all bets are off.
Replying to
The challenge is keeping ordinary people informed and trusting enough, for long enough, for big-mode controls to take effect since they all rely on consent of the governed. If the crowd loses patience, control fails, stability unravels.
1
12
Civilization is dynamically stabilizable, statically unstabilizable. Like a bicycle. It needs to be moving to be balanceable.
3
33
Systems theory at civilization scale is useless shit 99% of the time, but this one of those other 1% times. And more than stock-flow diagrams you need evocative language to make it work.
1
11
A good turn of phrase like “flatten the curve” can stretch system controllability (aka people not rioting) from weeks to months and make the difference between restored stability and a runaway unraveling.
1
25
Replying to
All bets are off regardless. And there is no global governance. We do have global companies, but their CEOs are ill equipped to run the world. The world is not run by anybody.
1
Replying to
There *is* global governance. It is just not enough for the scope of the problem. So the problem is 80% ungoverned, but the 20% being governed well is how the 80% is eventually reined in.
1
Show replies