> This statement rubs me the wrong way, in a similar fashion to what you've pointed out. I agree but more due to the blog author combining interesting topics l

> This statement rubs me the wrong way, in a similar fashion to what you've pointed out. I agree but more due to the blog author combining interesting topics like complex systems with value judgements asserting that a) the net effects are a major problem that needs to be worried about/addressed more than before, b) it's reached a tipping point, c) it could now get much 'worse' much faster than before and in new, unexpected ways. It's common these days for authors to try to elevate the relevance or urgency of their topic this way but how we should feel about the 'way the world is' is uninteresting. The world has always been complex and it's always been growing more complex at increasing rates. Such transparent present-day exceptionalism just evokes the "but this time it's going to be different (and much worse)" echoed by every concern troll and prophet of doom for hundreds of years. In reality, change is constant, net effects at large scale (ie global and decadal) are, on average, generally both positive and negative in roughly similar proportions to broad past trends. While there are certainly significant disruptions and calamities, the long-term, global meta-balance of pos/neg tends to eventually regress to the historical mean. In any given localized context there are always winners and losers and determining whether the net impact is "good" or "bad" is a subjective value judgement which varies based on perspective, context and how one chooses to count.