The Upside Of Down

Thomas Homer-Dixon

The Upside of Down - Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization

2006 by Shearwater Books

On Amazon

Tectonic Stresses

Human societies are threatened by interrelated stresses:

1. Population – growth rate is different in rich and poor societies, has peaked in some rich societies – the poor flood into rapidly growing megacities (e.g., Dhaka in Bangladesh)
2. Energy – high quality energy (oil) that fuels growth has peaked – we are now scrambling
3. Environmental – natural environment is being destroyed
4. Climate – atmosphere is changing, planet warming
5. Economic –gap between rich and poor is widening, societies becoming unstable – prone to revolution, terrorism

These conditions are like tectonic plates bumping into each other building up pressures which ultimately must be relieved.

Multipliers and Thresholds (Non-Linear Systems)

Conditions are made worse because of global connectivity. Everything, everyplace is connected. One thing can affect many things which can affect many things - and feed back on itself. This means a small event in one place can have an outsized impact everywhere. An unexpected but well-connected event can trigger a Fall. Maybe a pandemic comes out of Africa, a critical oil producer in the Middle East collapses, a terrorist uses a nuke anywhere, a critical component of the climate (say the Gulf Stream) fails.

It's The Flat Earth meets the Black Swan.

Thermodynamics

The underlying theory comes from complex adaptive systems. These include human and animal societies, the stock market, the biosphere, all businesses - human minds individually and collectively. The list goes on. Characteristics include connectivity, non-linear reactions (small causes can have large results), energy usage, growth.

The last two are especially important. Complex adaptive systems are thermodynamic. They suck energy out of environments, consuming the readily available energy first then as that supply is exhausted the more costly energy (in terms of money, effort). Adaptive systems that are smart enough try various compensating tricks as energy becomes scarcer. For example, in burgeoning rat populations the strong eat the weak - which might be analogous to what some rich humans do to poor humans.

(Regarding us - Homer-Dixon says human societies adapt to resource scarcity by becoming more and more complex, more connected and interdependent. We squeeze every last bit of efficiency out of our systems, until there is nothing left to squeeze. In the process we loose resiliency, become fragile, subject to disruption. )

In the final stage of growth cycle (common to all), adaptive systems become increasingly vulnerable to black swan events. Inevitably something happens. The whole thing falls apart. The Lemmings go off the cliff. The rat population collapses. The locusts, having eaten everything, starve. The forest burns. Rome falls. Entropy eases over the debris like still water.

(Homer-Dixon says that the upcoming Fall of human civilization will be a major social transformation "pulse" comparable to the transformation from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society, the industrial revolution, the communications revolution.)

Foreshocks include the recent recession, the current revolutions in the Middle East, the synergy of disaster in Japan.

Prospective Minds

But - and this is the hopeful note offered at the end of the book, if too much doesn't fail at one time, a resurgence can follow a Fall. Homer-Dixon calls this Catagensis. It's what happened in Western Europe after WWII, what happened in the Northern US after the Civil War (what happened to me after I had angioplasty - when I quit smoking, lost 40 pounds and started taking six mile walks). However if the things go too far (think Haiti, Somalia, Southern US after the Civil War) resurgence is less likely, or will take longer.

To minimize the effects of The Fall, Homer-Dixon says we need to develop value systems that get beyond consumerism and the growth imperative - that recognize (1) laws of thermodynamics and role of energy in our survival (2) dangers of certain kinds of connectivity and (3) non-linear behavior of natural systems. We must embrace change and surprise.

We need to develop prospective minds – embracing change and surprise, understanding how little we understand (can understand) how little we control (can control).

In the words of Nassim Taleb (the Black Swan guy) we must become citizens of Extremistan.

Links
I'll be adding links here to related web sites - mine and others. I'll probably also add notes and do obsessive ongoing editing.

Resilience (from Resilience Alliance)

Complex Adaptive Systems

The Collapse of Complex Societies (J. Tainter)

Island of the Tonal (me)

The Black Swan: - Nassim Taleb

Man on a Mission

Nassim Taleb is a man on mission. Like the Ancient Mariner, he seems compelled to tell his story. However, instead of being cursed by a dead albatross, he is plagued by black swans. They lurk unseen (and unseeable) in the corner of every room, waiting to peck us or preen us with no warning. They are the blindsiding beasts that Kurt Vonnegut mentioned in his commencement address to the MIT graduating class of 97...

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Aside - Taleb is also like the child pointing out the emperor who has no clothes. It seems so obvious. But who could believe such a strange thing? It violates all our stories, all our preconceptions. The emperor hides behind a veil of accepted reality - which of course makes the child really mad.

Main Points

The Black Swan describes a rough sort of trader zen - an eightfold way (more or less) for getting by in a world beset by black swans. It might be one of those books.

These are points that appeal to me:

1. The world consist of two overlapping realities. One, that Taleb calls Mediocristan, is orderly and predictable. Events here fit under a neat bell curve. It is dominated by the mean or middle. The other reality, that Taleb calls Extremistan, is wild and unpredictable. Events here are controlled by a so-called Pareto distribution. It is dominated by infrequent events of high magnitude - black swans.

2. The world is much more of an Extremistan place than we like to imagine.

3. We pretend the world is orderly and predictable (a Mediocristan place) because orderly and predictable is what we do as humans.

4. Extremistan is unfair.

5. Extremistan is exciting.

6. The best way to get along in Extremistan is to:

• Be where positive black swans happen (the Hollywood hopefuls hanging out at Schwab's Drugstore had it right). Learn to recognize good luck; when it occurs, run with it.
• Avoid neighborhoods where negative black swans hang out.
• Constantly tinker to see if something good bubbles up. Don't worry about being seen as (or being) outlandish. Modesty is an expensive virtue.
• Mistrust experts who claim to predict the future.
• Find tricks to cultivate hope.

7. It is better to be broadly right than narrowly right but broadly wrong.

8. The most unexpected (and the grandest) black swan is you.

Aside- Doing research for this book report, I found that many other people have noted how reality does not fit neatly under a Gaussian bell curve. Taleb's mentor Benoit Mandelbrot was one of those. They all describe the difference between the head and the long tail of the Pareto curve. However, Taleb seems to be the most taken with the randomness of the distribution (except for Kurt Vonnegut, which is why I included his quote above). This is Taleb's "truth" - how we are at the mercy of random forces, even though (to Taleb's consternation) we pretend otherwise.

Taleb's Prologue

Black swans are unpredictable phenomena that seem predictable after the fact. Before Europeans went to Australia the only swans anyone (other than aborigines) had seen were white. The possibility of black swans had never crossed anybody’s mind. Black swans are a different category of the unknown - not just unknown, but unknowable.

One way to recognize that a black swan has happened is when experts struggle to explain why something that seems inevitable today was never anticipated. The idea (the hope) is that if you can explain the last black swan you can predict the next one. But it never seems to work.

Taleb says that the following are attributes of a black swan:

1. It is an outlier (e..g, statistically it is numerically removed from the rest of the data - if charted on a bell curve it would be way out toward the edge).

2. It has a significant impact for the person (or persons) to whom it happens. It is not a minor event. It will be remembered.

3. After the fact, it appears explainable and predictable. It seems obvious (as in smacking your head and proclaiming, "Why didn't I think of that?")

History is caused by black swans - it is a collection of them. Because of that we can't really explain history - although after-the-fact explanations offered by historians seem perfectly reasonable. WW1 and 9/11 were black swans. So was Google. So is the current the economic mess. None of these events will ever be exactly repeated. But something else will happen.

Experts who claim predictive powers aren't.

We can adjust to black swans by learning to take advantage of positive black swans (good luck) and lessen our exposure to negative black swans (bad luck). We need to hang out where positive black swans happen. Most significant discoveries are black swans.

Our hunter-gatherer origins predispose us to concentrate on what we know rather than what we don't know. We are genetically predisposed to ignore black swans. Our minds are constructed to look for obvious patterns (there is a tiger in the bush, run) rather than abstractions.

We live in an increasingly recursive world where this affects that which comes back around and affects this. Things can spiral out of control in a hurry. That is when a black swan happens. It is a world of Mandelbrotian chaos.

According to Taleb, there are two possible ways to study anything - to focus on the normal, the predictable, or to focus on the unusual, the unpredictable. He prefers to the latter type of study because that is where all the action (positive and negative) is.

"Platonicity" is the tendency to lump everything into categories and forms, or, as Taleb says, "to mistake the map for the territory" - or, to mistake "treeness" for "trees". .He says it is this tendency that makes up think we know more than we do.

The "Platonic fold" is where platonic ideas met the real world. Black swans fly out of this juncture (sort of like volcanoes erupt from the juncture of tectonic plates).

Talk is cheap. Action is important.

Warning - In summarizing Taleb (and trying to be clever) I probably got some little stuff wrong. Sorry. However, I think (hope) I got the big stuff right. Taleb would say that is the most important thing.

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

Thomas Friedman

This is a book of clever stories and neat lists.

It examines the potential and perils of the third great era of globalization - when people become globally connected across the world. The two previous eras (beginning in 1492 when Columbus made his trip) connected countries and companies.

Friedman says that the world has become flat as a result of globalization. Barriers between trade and communication have come down (been flattened). The playing field on which people, companies, and countries compete and play has been leveled. The world is no longer large and round; it is a small and flat. The people on the playing field are just as likely to be brown and Eastern as they are to be white and Western.

Ten forces, some social (such as the falling of the Berlin Wall) and some technical (such as the rise of internet and broadband communication) flattened the world. These forces converged with business and political developments to create what Friedman calls Globalization 3.0.

Of course, the flattening process is not complete. Many irregularities and rough spots remain. Nor do all people and countries profit equally. Some people, the sick, old, ignorant, and less agile are likely to get squished in the grand flattening. Nor is the process inevitable or irreversible. A grand old fashioned war could throw everything off.

Right now we are in a sorting-out period, figuring out what (and who) gets flattened and what (and who) is allowed to remain somewhat irregular - perhaps for compassionate or sentimental reasons.

Friedman offers advice to individuals, companies, and countries on how to survive and prosper during the great flattening.

Link To Complete Report

Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth

Joseph Campbell 1904 - 1987

This report is from a PBS interview with Bill Moyers broadcast in 1988 (the year after Campbell died).

The interview covered...

• The purpose of myths
• When they started
• Common themes
• Relationships to psychology, religion and the hero's journey

It included asides about...

• Caves and cathedrals
• Sacred trees (Buddha's Bo tree and Christ's cross)
• Dragons of the east and the west
• Hinduism

In the interview Campbell observed that God is beyond good and evil and in some of his/her aspects can be quite horrific.

Link To Complete Report

Konrad Lorenz - On Aggression

Konrad Lorenz 1903 - 1989

Lorenz was a famous natural scientist who lived with and studied geese.

In this book he looks at what makes animals (including humans) fight.

He shows that aggression evolved, like the other big instincts (hunger, flight and sex), because it serves a purpose. He shows how it can go bad.

He describes the rituals that animals (and people) evolved to keep aggression in check.

He notes that rats, in some of their human-like behavior, are evil.

He explains how the rituals of some professional killers, such as wolves and humans, grew into friendship and love (and how instinctive morality is better developed in wolves than in humans).

Link To Complete Report

Eric Berne - Games People Play

Dr. Eric Berne 1910 - 1970

Transactional analysis is a theory of psychology based on interactions or "transactions" between people. These are some of the main ideas:

We spend our time from birth to death engaging in transactions.

Participants in transactions act out one or more roles (Child, Parent, Adult).

The roles are determined by childhood experiences.

The kinds of transactions we engage in and what we say ("after we say hello") are determined by scripts. Scripts are internal programs that come from our genetics, family traditions, culture, and from our parents when they speak, scream, caress, and hit.

Games are a particular type of transaction played by two or more people. Games are played for a payoff. The payoff is a desired feeling (possibly a justified sense of anger) on the part of "IT" - the one who initiated the game. All games involve maneuvering another person to do something that lets "IT" get his or her feeling.

Transactional analysis (TA) became associated with feel-good, pop psychology movements of the 1970's and 80's. The book Games People Play even inspired a song. However, to me, as a lay crazy person, this book and Berne's other book (What Do You Say After You Say Hello) seem serious. They jibe with my own experiences.

Link To Complete Report

Mircea Eliade - The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion

Mircea Eliade 1907 - 1986

Eliade examines the differences between "religious man" and "profane man".

He explains the impulses that prompt religious man (and woman - Eliade does not seem interested in correctness) to seek religious explanations for the chaos and relativity of the natural world. He describes how religious man uses ready-made symbols from that world to construct his myths.

Eliade contrasts religious man with profane man, noting how profane man, even when trying to escape sacred strictures, remains influenced by those views.

He concludes by saying that religion poses paradigmatic solutions to existential crises of being - questions about who we are, what we are, what the world is (e.g., those European diseases of the soul - angst, ennui and the absurd).

Link To Complete Report