4 ms·

It would be interesting to try to draw parallels with other complex systems. e.g. Is the percentage of mass or resource allocation to a body's immune system si

It would be interesting to try to draw parallels with other complex systems. e.g. Is the percentage of mass or resource allocation to a body's immune system similar to that devoted to a nation state's military and police force? Do all complex systems naturally normalize on a similar percentage devoted to defense that maximizes resources going to non defense productivity without leaving the system too vulnerable to attack? Is this already a formalized area of study?

koolba 3y ago
That’s exactly the parallel I was considering. And it’s eerily close too. The USA military is about 1.4M people which works out to about .4% of the population. Thats pretty close to the .2% in the study!
- anonporridge 3y ago
  And to crudely compare mass to resource allocation, the article claims more than 1.2kg of immune mass for the 73kg model individual, or 1.6% of total mass. The US military budget is about 3% of GDP. The resource devotion of most all nation states seems to settle in this 1-3% range, excluding those with more active security tensions. Ukraine for example running an absolute fever at 34% and Israel chronically stressed at 4.5%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... The middle east in general seems to over allocate on their immune system. This would actually align with what I've been reading recently that modern Islamic culture is much more of a physical might makes right system. And that overspend on aggression and displays of power is part of what hampers their economic vitality while the more peace loving west gets to devote more resources to non destructive pursuits. Turning the other cheek and meeting in the middle is seen as weakness in the Middle East, but it counter intuitively is the reason that the west is the stronger system. Similarly, those who get their vaccines spend less time sick with their immune system inflamed, and so get to be more productive at work or athletic pursuits and compete better than those that abstain.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    I think you'd want to add the police. Edit: one of the core functions of the immune system is identifying and eliminating pre-cancerous cells from your own body, if you downvote this out of reflexive politics you are a clown.
    - anonporridge 3y ago
      I agree. Those numbers are just harder to come by.
    - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
      > if you downvote this out of reflexive politics you are a clown It is not that serious... The emphasis that you yourself added is counterproductive to your point and deliberately precludes discussing viewpoints that would be valid because nobody wants to deal with a "hyper-reactive".
      - justrealist 3y ago
        It was at -1 within a few minutes of posting, so I think the edit was deserved.
  - heyodai 3y ago
    > And that overspend on aggression and displays of power is part of what hampers their economic vitality while the more peace loving west gets to devote more resources to non destructive pursuits. I'm sure this has nothing to do with centuries of western imperialism in that region.
    - aranelsurion 3y ago
      I'd be (non-sarcastically) interested in reading any materials/sources you have on this specific topic. Is this view simply because dumping on the west is popular nowadays, or are there really strong ties on islamic culture and its relationship with the west?
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  But isn’t the us military unusually large (or is that just a media perception?)
  - dataflow 3y ago
    Depends on whether you consider the argument that it's indirectly protecting other countries too, I think.
  - softg 3y ago
    Not propotionally, no. The US comes 77th out of 150 or so countries in number of active military personnel per capita. Small countries with an existential threat looming over them like the two Koreas and Cuba have unusually large militaries compared to their size. The US is the third most populous country so its military is still exceptionally big in absolute terms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    US defense spending is large in absolute terms, and per GDP for a liberal democratic state. The US military isn't large in terms of personnel in uniform as a share of population, though.
    - ostbender 3y ago
      It's proportionally large because the other liberal democratic states conveniently depend on the US for protection.
  - kypro 3y ago
    The military in terms of personnel or spending? US military spending is large.
  - lainga 3y ago
    It is unusually well-funded, and also large in absolute numbers, but not proportionally to the population. Greece and South Korea, for instance, have 1.3% and 1.1% of their populations in active service. When you include reservists (of varying quality) the cake goes to North Korea with 30% (!), but notably also Cuba (11%), Taiwan (7.8%), Israel (7.6%). During WWII, many nations managed to cumulatively mobilize 10-15% of their population (about 9%, 16 million, for the USA).
- Terr_ 3y ago
  On a lighter (or perhaps much darker) note, that makes me think of this exchange where a wizard-detective is trying to convince a mundane coroner that vampires exist. > "Maybe," he said. "But I don't see how things that hunt and kill human beings could be there among us without our knowing." > [...] "You can check with the FBI. That's out of about three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year. It's been almost twenty years since you graduated? So that would mean that between forty and fifty people in your class are gone. Just gone. No one knows where they are." > Butters shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "So?" > [...] I let the silence stretch for a minute, just to make the point. Then I started up again. "Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators." -- Dead Beat by Jim Butcher No clue if the math works out. It took me a while to find it, I kept thinking it was from one of the Blade movies instead.
- rvba 3y ago
  Technically you should add police too
wongarsu 3y ago
The first couple google results suggest that there are about 38 trillion human cells in the average male adult, plus about as many bacterial cells. Estimates vary a bit, but at least the human cell count should be accurate to within 10 trillion. So estimating at 80 trillion cells per human, that puts our "defense spending" at around 2.2%, quite similar to nation state budgets.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Doesn’t “defense” spending at the state level also include offense though?
  - anonporridge 3y ago
    Good point, and this is where the analogy breaks down a bit in my mind. Or at least, this is where the complexity of comparison gets out of hand.
deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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cantrevealname 3y ago
> draw parallels with other complex systems My first thought was how software complexity imitates life. I remember seeing a reference[1] that about 5-10% of all Windows operating system source code was dedicated to security in one sense or another, such as malware detection, cryptographic libraries, certificates, Defender, Bitlocker, UAC, all the complicated code for file permissions, privileges, authentication, etc. [1] This is one of those things that is very difficult to Google for, and I haven't been able to find a reference to where I read it.

koolba 3y ago

That’s exactly the parallel I was considering. And it’s eerily close too. The USA military is about 1.4M people which works out to about .4% of the population. Thats pretty close to the .2% in the study!

anonporridge 3y ago
And to crudely compare mass to resource allocation, the article claims more than 1.2kg of immune mass for the 73kg model individual, or 1.6% of total mass. The US military budget is about 3% of GDP. The resource devotion of most all nation states seems to settle in this 1-3% range, excluding those with more active security tensions. Ukraine for example running an absolute fever at 34% and Israel chronically stressed at 4.5%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... The middle east in general seems to over allocate on their immune system. This would actually align with what I've been reading recently that modern Islamic culture is much more of a physical might makes right system. And that overspend on aggression and displays of power is part of what hampers their economic vitality while the more peace loving west gets to devote more resources to non destructive pursuits. Turning the other cheek and meeting in the middle is seen as weakness in the Middle East, but it counter intuitively is the reason that the west is the stronger system. Similarly, those who get their vaccines spend less time sick with their immune system inflamed, and so get to be more productive at work or athletic pursuits and compete better than those that abstain.
- justrealist 3y ago
  I think you'd want to add the police. Edit: one of the core functions of the immune system is identifying and eliminating pre-cancerous cells from your own body, if you downvote this out of reflexive politics you are a clown.
  - anonporridge 3y ago
    I agree. Those numbers are just harder to come by.
  - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
    > if you downvote this out of reflexive politics you are a clown It is not that serious... The emphasis that you yourself added is counterproductive to your point and deliberately precludes discussing viewpoints that would be valid because nobody wants to deal with a "hyper-reactive".
    - justrealist 3y ago
      It was at -1 within a few minutes of posting, so I think the edit was deserved.
- heyodai 3y ago
  > And that overspend on aggression and displays of power is part of what hampers their economic vitality while the more peace loving west gets to devote more resources to non destructive pursuits. I'm sure this has nothing to do with centuries of western imperialism in that region.
  - aranelsurion 3y ago
    I'd be (non-sarcastically) interested in reading any materials/sources you have on this specific topic. Is this view simply because dumping on the west is popular nowadays, or are there really strong ties on islamic culture and its relationship with the west?
wodenokoto 3y ago
But isn’t the us military unusually large (or is that just a media perception?)
- dataflow 3y ago
  Depends on whether you consider the argument that it's indirectly protecting other countries too, I think.
- softg 3y ago
  Not propotionally, no. The US comes 77th out of 150 or so countries in number of active military personnel per capita. Small countries with an existential threat looming over them like the two Koreas and Cuba have unusually large militaries compared to their size. The US is the third most populous country so its military is still exceptionally big in absolute terms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  US defense spending is large in absolute terms, and per GDP for a liberal democratic state. The US military isn't large in terms of personnel in uniform as a share of population, though.
  - ostbender 3y ago
    It's proportionally large because the other liberal democratic states conveniently depend on the US for protection.
- kypro 3y ago
  The military in terms of personnel or spending? US military spending is large.
- lainga 3y ago
  It is unusually well-funded, and also large in absolute numbers, but not proportionally to the population. Greece and South Korea, for instance, have 1.3% and 1.1% of their populations in active service. When you include reservists (of varying quality) the cake goes to North Korea with 30% (!), but notably also Cuba (11%), Taiwan (7.8%), Israel (7.6%). During WWII, many nations managed to cumulatively mobilize 10-15% of their population (about 9%, 16 million, for the USA).
Terr_ 3y ago
On a lighter (or perhaps much darker) note, that makes me think of this exchange where a wizard-detective is trying to convince a mundane coroner that vampires exist. > "Maybe," he said. "But I don't see how things that hunt and kill human beings could be there among us without our knowing." > [...] "You can check with the FBI. That's out of about three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year. It's been almost twenty years since you graduated? So that would mean that between forty and fifty people in your class are gone. Just gone. No one knows where they are." > Butters shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "So?" > [...] I let the silence stretch for a minute, just to make the point. Then I started up again. "Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators." -- Dead Beat by Jim Butcher No clue if the math works out. It took me a while to find it, I kept thinking it was from one of the Blade movies instead.
rvba 3y ago
Technically you should add police too

wongarsu 3y ago

The first couple google results suggest that there are about 38 trillion human cells in the average male adult, plus about as many bacterial cells. Estimates vary a bit, but at least the human cell count should be accurate to within 10 trillion. So estimating at 80 trillion cells per human, that puts our "defense spending" at around 2.2%, quite similar to nation state budgets.

pfannkuchen 3y ago
Doesn’t “defense” spending at the state level also include offense though?
- anonporridge 3y ago
  Good point, and this is where the analogy breaks down a bit in my mind. Or at least, this is where the complexity of comparison gets out of hand.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

cantrevealname 3y ago

> draw parallels with other complex systems My first thought was how software complexity imitates life. I remember seeing a reference[1] that about 5-10% of all Windows operating system source code was dedicated to security in one sense or another, such as malware detection, cryptographic libraries, certificates, Defender, Bitlocker, UAC, all the complicated code for file permissions, privileges, authentication, etc. [1] This is one of those things that is very difficult to Google for, and I haven't been able to find a reference to where I read it.