brockm on Nostr: I think we actually disagree, here. Fundamentally. I think all complex systems are, ...

I think we actually disagree, here. Fundamentally. I think all complex systems are, at best, metastable. Only adaptive systems are able to persist for long periods of time. I can think of nothing in nature — literally nothing — that is absolutely stable. Except maybe the proton. Which still may be unstable, and the only reason we haven’t seen a decay event, could be because the proton’s half-life is some major multiple of the age of the universe or something.

But for social and economic systems, my base rate assumption, is they exist within metastability windows, and no set of rules or axioms can maintain their stability indefinitely. Eventually the second law of thermodynamics will rear its ugly head in every system.