2 ms·

<< Things exist in an unstable equilibrium, like an inverted pendulum. It takes little to throw things off balance (I can explain more if needed, with examples)

<< Things exist in an unstable equilibrium, like an inverted pendulum. It takes little to throw things off balance (I can explain more if needed, with examples). I think it may not be a bad idea. I think I understand what you are referring to, but some examples would be great. << Defeatist (I apologize if I'm misinterpreting). I want to believe it is pragmatic, but I do take your points seriously and will do some self-reflection on it. I believe you are especially right about the ease with which we allow ourselves to reduce cognitive load.

godelski 2y ago
> some examples would be great. Our modern world has resulted in many things being extremely complex. Many things these days require many steps to create and with each part of the process being dependent upon the previous one. Take something as simple as creating a nail. You got to mine the iron, gather the carbon. You got to transport the iron from the mine, to a ship, that travels across the world to go get processed and turned into iron, then transported again to get processed into steel, that steel is then sold to be reheated and reformed into the nail, which is then shipped across the world into a warehouse to your local home depot. There's so many steps missing from that, with like acquiring the tools to mine the materials, to even your car and the fact you need to repeat the whole process for all that including the hammer you will use to hit the nail. Suppose you have a process with many steps and each step has an error rate of 0.1% (99.9% success rate). If your process has 10 steps, your success rate is only 99%, but if 100 steps it is 90%, 200 it is 81.9%, and 500 steps and it is only 60%. You can probably see with the above that things are going to take thousands of steps. Most of this operates pretty well and there is redundancy built in. But there's a reason the whole world shuts down when a ship gets stuck in a canal. While most things aren't as critical of a choke point, but things aren't running on such efficiency that it can handle hard disruptions. Just see how quickly things fell apart in the pandemic. > I want to believe it is pragmatic I'm not sure what is pragmatic about it. That you can do nothing? You can't make things better? I'm not trying to say to go change the world for everyone and be someone they write about in history books. I'm saying focus on your local world, the things around you. You can definitely change that. I'm trying to say that by changing that that it does make a difference at the larger scale. The butterfly effect is a very real thing and it isn't all just doom and gloom.

godelski 2y ago

> some examples would be great. Our modern world has resulted in many things being extremely complex. Many things these days require many steps to create and with each part of the process being dependent upon the previous one. Take something as simple as creating a nail. You got to mine the iron, gather the carbon. You got to transport the iron from the mine, to a ship, that travels across the world to go get processed and turned into iron, then transported again to get processed into steel, that steel is then sold to be reheated and reformed into the nail, which is then shipped across the world into a warehouse to your local home depot. There's so many steps missing from that, with like acquiring the tools to mine the materials, to even your car and the fact you need to repeat the whole process for all that including the hammer you will use to hit the nail. Suppose you have a process with many steps and each step has an error rate of 0.1% (99.9% success rate). If your process has 10 steps, your success rate is only 99%, but if 100 steps it is 90%, 200 it is 81.9%, and 500 steps and it is only 60%. You can probably see with the above that things are going to take thousands of steps. Most of this operates pretty well and there is redundancy built in. But there's a reason the whole world shuts down when a ship gets stuck in a canal. While most things aren't as critical of a choke point, but things aren't running on such efficiency that it can handle hard disruptions. Just see how quickly things fell apart in the pandemic. > I want to believe it is pragmatic I'm not sure what is pragmatic about it. That you can do nothing? You can't make things better? I'm not trying to say to go change the world for everyone and be someone they write about in history books. I'm saying focus on your local world, the things around you. You can definitely change that. I'm trying to say that by changing that that it does make a difference at the larger scale. The butterfly effect is a very real thing and it isn't all just doom and gloom.