I haven’t finished the book yet, but he bases it on diminishing returns from supporting the necessary complexity. Seems like a reasonable hypothesis to me.
“Complexity” is not a universally defined term, so you could probably argue both ends. A complex system could be defined as a well diversified one, which is probably more robust. Or a complex system could be defined as one with many interdependencies between constituents, which would be more fragile.
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complex and fragile are orthogonal properties. you can easily find examples of complex/non-fragile and simple/fragile.
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I mean, like modern cars are astronomically more complex than they they used to be, and they’re also way more reliable.
This is definitely true, but there is still quite a lot to be mined from the complexity/fragility hypothesis. Like, if you put a bunch of systems on a complexity/fragility 2D chart do they cluster? Do systems in a cluster share characteristics? Does that provide insight into how systems should be designed?
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Sounds pretty Malthusian to me, but admittedly haven’t read this book and will probably start a new video game instead of reading it. Wait why am I posting this? Meh too late it takes one click to post, two to delete
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the clustering will be very misleading. do you put every car make and model as separate dots or clump them together? there are a billion cars and only ~a thousand nuclear reactors, how do you normalize that? fragility also means different things for those systems.
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Sure, but while cars can be thought of as ‘systems’, they’re really designed objects. Societies can be thought of as objects, but they’re really organic systems. I don’t think the analogy holds water.
Search this book for the word entropy imo.
Edit: Sleep-addled so feel free to ignore. Not sure how sound it is to apply physical concepts to social systems.
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Charlie Kirk looks like what happens when you are customizing the physical appearance of a character on an rpg and you max out the head size and minimize the face size.
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Complexity in technological systems and social systems are not analogous. With technological systems it often signals greater integration while with social systems it normally means less. Everything we know from various social sciences is that people have difficulty making stable complex social systems with large numbers of people.
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Really? Because it doesn’t seem like the world is in an era of maximal instability.
Is some of this an increase in demand for remodeling construction? Idk, but a lot of people seem to be having work done.
You know how if you make a building tall enough it has to become all elevators.
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That depends on what metric we are using.
I think in social systems strong institutions provide stability and resilience. Our institutions have been in decline for a while. Our world is probably more stable than, say, pre 1900 because the 20th century saw the rise of many strong, secular institutions. But so far the 21st century has really seen an erosion in the reliability of Western institutions. IMO it started with Reagan and his antigovernment rhetoric which really empowered the worst instincts of baby boomers (not that they needed much help).
This sounds more pessimistic than I really am, but the next 10-20 years seem likely to be pretty rough. Globally the average quality of life has been increasing and probably will continue to do so, which is great. But I think the West and in particular the US is just going to be a shitshow as they lose their position of global dominance. Stronger institutions could have set the US onto a track for a softer landing but it feels like that’s not going to happen.
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The era around 1900 was ridiculously unstable. From the Spanish-American War through WWII there were competing world powers vying for military domination and revolutions going on all over the rest of the world. 2000s were nothing like that. If it were anything like it, we’d all be dead.
Yeah and also Europe wasn’t terribly stable before the technological revolution.