brockm on Nostr: Believing that because internal contradictions can be shown to exist within a system, ...
Believing that because internal contradictions can be shown to exist within a system, that presages the inevitable collapse or failure of that system is one of the biggest reasoning errors that really smart people make when trying to think about complex systems like large scale human societies.
The mere fact that hypocrisy can easily be demonstrated, does not mean the system cannot continue to function indefinitely.
Thus, if you're looking at say, a nation state like the United States, and you're observing contradictions in its government, in its systems, and in its collective behaviors, and this gives you confidence that collapse is assured, you're implicitly making the argument that only internally-consistent systems can be stable across time. Except, no complex systems in nature are necessarily internally-consistent -- assuming that what we mean by that, is that the constituent components of that system are at some optimal equilibrium with each other. Everything we know about complex systems is that they are, at best, metastable. Including the system that is the human body. It exists within a range of stability, with your bodies functions providing feedback mechanisms to compensate for internal and external thresholds. Within a certain phase space, your body's metabolism can function. But it's never at a stable equilibrium. Stability is actually a constant moving target, that innumerable amounts of feedback mechanisms, through metabolic processes are constantly acting to compensate for changes. Adaptive complex systems are what show stability across time. And part of the reason why they have to be adaptive in the first place, is they are constantly having to respond to contradictions, and balance them to keep chasing the moving equilibrium.
Complex systems like human societies and even nations operate in a phase space too. The apparent contradictions do not represent some kind of sign that the system is operating outside of the phase space of its ability to adapt to stresses on it. Thinking in this puritanical way is going to cause you to fool yourself into thinking certain things are inevitable in the future, which are not inevitable at all.
The mere fact that hypocrisy can easily be demonstrated, does not mean the system cannot continue to function indefinitely.
Thus, if you're looking at say, a nation state like the United States, and you're observing contradictions in its government, in its systems, and in its collective behaviors, and this gives you confidence that collapse is assured, you're implicitly making the argument that only internally-consistent systems can be stable across time. Except, no complex systems in nature are necessarily internally-consistent -- assuming that what we mean by that, is that the constituent components of that system are at some optimal equilibrium with each other. Everything we know about complex systems is that they are, at best, metastable. Including the system that is the human body. It exists within a range of stability, with your bodies functions providing feedback mechanisms to compensate for internal and external thresholds. Within a certain phase space, your body's metabolism can function. But it's never at a stable equilibrium. Stability is actually a constant moving target, that innumerable amounts of feedback mechanisms, through metabolic processes are constantly acting to compensate for changes. Adaptive complex systems are what show stability across time. And part of the reason why they have to be adaptive in the first place, is they are constantly having to respond to contradictions, and balance them to keep chasing the moving equilibrium.
Complex systems like human societies and even nations operate in a phase space too. The apparent contradictions do not represent some kind of sign that the system is operating outside of the phase space of its ability to adapt to stresses on it. Thinking in this puritanical way is going to cause you to fool yourself into thinking certain things are inevitable in the future, which are not inevitable at all.