{"id":40907,"date":"2018-11-25T13:21:54","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T18:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40907"},"modified":"2018-11-25T13:21:54","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T18:21:54","slug":"the-two-paths-to-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40907","title":{"rendered":"The Two Paths to Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Two Paths to Collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The very structure of our systems guarantees their failure once conditions change beyond their limited ability to adjust.<\/i><\/div>\n
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As a general rule, there are two paths to collapse: gradual erosion and sudden crash.<\/b>\u00a0The two are intertwined, of course; in most cases, the system slowly loses vigor, resources, efficiency, etc. (erosion) which leaves it so weakened that a crisis that would have easily been overcome in the past triggers a catastrophic decline of production and order.<\/div>\n
My new book explores these system dynamics in the present:<\/b>\u00a0Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic<\/a>. As the title suggests, we’ve got a window to prevent the final descent, but it’s years, not decades.<\/div>\n
There are two basic drivers of systemic erosion, drivers that have little to do with leadership or policy.<\/b>\u00a0Our current delusion is that changing leaders and tweaking policies are enough to stave off systemic erosion, decline and collapse, but the two dynamics cannot be so easily thwarted.<\/div>\n
The first is the gradual decline in the system’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances.<\/b>\u00a0Life’s core asset is the ability to evolve and adapt, and organisms, species and systems which fail to adapt fast enough and effectively enough to rapid change disappear.<\/div>\n
Today’s modern complex systems are typically\u00a0optimized<\/i>\u00a0to specific conditions,<\/b>\u00a0meaning that they’ve evolved (or been designed) to maximize production and output given a certain set of inputs and processes.<\/div>\n
If those conditions shift outside the expected parameters, the system’s efficiency and output are heavily eroded.<\/b>\u00a0To take a real-world example: airliners are designed to cruise at specific altitudes to maximize the efficiency of the engines and aircraft design while maximizing the cruising speed.<\/div>\n
If an airliner is forced to fly at an altitude of 500 feet instead of 35,000 feet, the optimizations are lost.<\/div>\n
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\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Two Paths to Collapse The very structure of our systems guarantees their failure once conditions change beyond their limited ability to adjust. As a general rule, there are two paths to collapse: gradual erosion and sudden crash.\u00a0The two are intertwined, of course; in most cases, the system slowly loses vigor, resources, efficiency, etc. (erosion) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[127,150,153,196,587,6856],"class_list":["post-40907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-collapse","tag-complex-systems","tag-decline","tag-of-two-minds","tag-systemic-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40908,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40907\/revisions\/40908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}