Resilience in Complex Systems (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Resilience in Complex Systems (2021)

irhum.github.io

103 pointsgrobby5 comments

I found the part "Humans in Complex Systems" quite interesting. My understanding of it is that technology could fall short of being an adequate solution to a more systemic problem wrt climate change. In addition to that work, I've been digging around the perspective of system dynamics [1] on the issues the global civilization is facing [2].

I feel the crowd here is more biased toward a solutionist view on those issues - I might be very wrong. Anyway, I was curious about different perspectives on this topics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc

That was a good read. However, it seems like the section on geo engineering does exactly what the rest tries to warn against: predicting behavior using simplified first order models.

I'm biased towards believing the conclusion the author draws, but the reasoning here is suspect.

My understanding on the section on geoengineering is that it's merely pointing out that the underlying dynamic of the whole system wouldn't change with a new technology. The dynamic in question is that humans are applying too much pressure on their environment, the CO2 emissions are only a symptom.

In the fox-rabbit analogy, the fox (humans) find a way to eat rabbits that increases the delta parameter but the equations themselves don't change.

It seems like a good example of recently learning a principle. Enough time and effort passed that they gained a working understanding of a noteworthy aspect but have yet to integrate it.

Their presentation is on complex systems, but the author’s thought process still develops linearly and rationally.

From what I can see they identified the problem and a solution, underdeveloped the solution, and presented the result anyway.

Emergence happens as multiple feedback loops interplay with each other.

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