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Has a behavior regime structurally similar to cancer been found in any non-living complex system? Or is it purely rhetorical/metaphoric, as in "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" (environmentalist Edward Abbey)
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self-brainstorm: virus are non-living and exhibit "growth for growth sake." I think certain kinds of algae will strangle off pond ecosystems by covering the surface (I'm unclear if 'ecosystem' qualifies as a living system?).
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its a stretch but maybe the abelian sandpile model. Represent a human with each cell as a grain of sand in 'energy space' (land of potential wells, etc). We start off as one cell, and then multiply with little changes to each.
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Each new cell/multiplication is like another particle of sand dropping onto the collective pile that is "us" [..in energy space]. Once the pile gets high enough, it reaches critical state.
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From this point forward, each new sand particle added could either have no effect or cause a total system collapse--just as the human body is relatively able to fight cancer while growing until one eventually "slips through the cracks" leading to systemic collapse.
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is the basic idea that something in a non-living complex system is spawned that resource-hogs all the other system components? [black hole jumps to mind, but still feels off]
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