> Economic systems are rather like cellular automata. They either splutter around for a while and die out, or they take over the board and assimilate everything

> Economic systems are rather like cellular automata. They either splutter around for a while and die out, or they take over the board and assimilate everything. This metaphor is amazing. I wanted to reply that cellular automata can in fact produce highly-localized, stable systems (like glider cannons in Conway's GoL). Then I realized that while those systems are stable, they are also so brittle that a single flipped bit will destroy them incredibly fast. That sounds a lot like economics.