Slides from presentation to Science, Technology & the Future group looking at commonalities across scales of systems collapse

1. Life and Death as
Systems Collapse
Tony Smith
Science, Technology & the Future
25 July 2019

2. Life and Death as
Systems Collapse
Tony Smith
Science, Technology & the Future
25 July 2019

3. Life and Death as
Systems CollapseWith talk of an unwanted race between unimaginable
global-scale ecological and economic collapse,
it can be useful to remind ourselves that systems collapse
is a common and familiar occurrence at other scales.
While there are various ways systems can collapse,
commonalities include difficulty of precise prediction and
common involvement of multiple contributing factors.
Systems prone to collapse have a web of internal dependencies which are needed to adjust
to external variability.
Life itself is a classic example.
Continued health depends on keeping those internals performing within tolerance limits.
Increasing connectedness of man-made systems is pushing them into similar territory.
Deaths from natural causes provide familiar examples of systems collapse at human scale.
They can also inform our understanding of bigger risks.

4. Rally for Elijah
6 pm 28 July 2017

5. Going Down with the Egg Basket
David Graeber is a cultural anthropologist,
anarchist activist, veteran of Occupy Wall Street,
and award-winning author.
His book stitches together prior essays with a
strong introduction, focuses on the phrase
“structural violence” (structures that could only
be created and maintained by the threat of state
violence) and raises the lack of distinction
between “play” and “rules” in most languages and
a human need for certainty and uncertainty.
Going Down with the Egg Basket
aims to put a Complex Systems theory wrapper
around Graeber’s wealth of data, with emphasis
on the emergence of entities which get established
within gradients of words and money, gathering
influence and resources for their own
unexamined purposes.
SUPERVENIENCE
how emergent minds and money
seize power over matter
a work in progress
Tony Smith
Kororoit Institute
Tonight in outline
• Connectedness
• Long histories and
quick deaths
• Model systems
• Singular cause as
exception
• Panicking
constructively
Extra background
• Systems Collapse is
central to
• Going Down with the
Egg Basket
• building on Graeber’s
structural violence
• plus other topics of
the Supervenience
project

6. Too Funny for Words
Abstractions, Category Errors,
Epistemic Cuts
Life on an Active Planet The Two-edged Sword
Multiple Paths to Emergence
Constraints and
Degrees of Freedom
Birds and Others Interweb to Facebook
Better than Out of Control
Information,
Maps and Territories
Urban Hydrology out of Sight
Going Down with
the Egg Basket
Self-organising, Adaptive
Codification and
Communication
Exploiting a
Dissipating Gradient:
creaming, trickle down
Dystopian Utopias and
Science Fiction
Towards Healthy
General Knowledge
The Inside View:
knowing when you're dreaming
Verbal Blindness
Accepting Cosmological
Responsibility

7. The last thing I want is to be
right about any of this

8. Connectedness:
passing the limits of what
we can learn by isolation
• Particles or fields?
[Brooks 2010]
• Life as a few billion
years making more
ribosomes or
• Life as a whole self-
nurturing system?
• Network effects
• Route 70 tram view
of “independent”
small businesses
• Deep dependencies
underpinning newly
vital technologies
[Bridle 2018]
• Energy Returned on
Energy Invested

9. For me, regenerative practice starts with working on
myself and checking in with and regularly renewing
my clear intention to be of service to the healing of
the unbroken whole, to life as a planetary process.
Regenerative practice is about building one’s own
capacity and that of our communities to work
creatively from the potential inherent in the bio-
cultural uniqueness of each place and its people.
Humanity at the Edge of Chaos
Daniel Christian Wahl, author of
Designing Regenerative Cultures
There is a big difference between
looking at the past for answers and
looking to the past for guidance.
Ribosomes comprise a complex macromolecular machine,
found within all living cells, that serves as the site of
biological protein synthesis (translation). Ribosomes link
amino acids together in the order specified by messenger
RNA (mRNA) molecules.
Ribosomes consist of two major components: the small
ribosomal subunits, which read the mRNA, and the large
subunits, which join amino acids to form a polypeptide
chain. Each subunit consists of one or more ribosomal
RNA molecules and a variety of ribosomal proteins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome
Life thrives on the excess (re)production of other life.
Only humans use industrial methods to kill indiscriminately.

10. Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) is more sensible than money as a measure of value,
making it clear that fossil fuels are already on a down slope with no sense to extending profligacy.

11. Fracturing coal seams has uncosted externalities

12. Long histories
and quick deaths
• Otherwise helpful ten-
dency to keep doing
what already works
• Delusions of
universality
• Suppressed wisdom
• All eggs in one basket
• Bankruptcy
• Too big to fail
• Safe is dangerous
• “Didn't see it coming”
• Optimisation to
threshold of criticality
• Accumulation
• Diversity

13. ❧
Is human nature an oxymoron?
Death is the natural price of life
Language was human difference
Loose use is now the problem
Gregory Bateson’s Double Bind
Tiny blue dot’s diverse landscapes
James C Scott Seeing Like a State
Globalisation universalises risks
Longer it works Harder it breaks
Lifetime in shadow of armageddon
Loving and hating America’s acts
❧
Comedy and Tragedy and Drama
Us and Them ever more inclusive
Emotional price of Their wellbeing
Life was cheap Children cheaper
The value of large old growth trees
Where is value of a life well lived?
Journey is more than reward
Recovering endangered species
Nurturing healthy ecosystems
The only truly final state is death
How far should we postpone it?
❧

14. “Didn't see it coming”

15. Optimisation to threshold of criticality

16. Model systems
• Sand pile
• Landslide
• Earthquake
• Eruption
• Double whammy
• Triggering depleted
system
• Chain of
circumstance
• Adaptive self-
organisation
• Chimera
• Positive feedback
• Flooding
• Undermining
• Congestion
• Turbulence
• Keystone species
• Trophic cascade
• Resonance
15 Jan 2018
28 Dec 2018
12 Oct 2014
25 Dec 2015
24 Jan 2016 6 Jan 2017

17. Landslide

18. Adaptive self-organisation

19. Flooding of Australia’s major civil
manufacturing site, H.V. McKay’s
Sunshine Harvester factory, in the
1940s led to the diversion of the
upstream flow from Stony Creek
via concrete pipes to the Kororoit

20. Congestion

21. Keystone species

22. Singular cause
as exception
• Science as practiced
in reductionist silos
delivers ever more
information
from specific
research
while ever more
dependent
on theory and
instrument
technology
for choice of what
to look at
• Nothing happens in
isolation
• Many low hanging
fruit
have already been
picked
Brick building was a four storey high machine for turning wheat into flour

23. Checking inside the heritage

24. Nothing happens in isolation

25. Panicking
constructively
• Painful as it is
to a SciFi fan
yes, it does appear
most likely
our light cone’s
only space-capable
civilisation
is fatally wounded
with key thresholds
crossed
on our watch
• Before laying down
to die
we should at least
explore
more hopeful exit
strategies
• We can only affect
the future

27. But we must also learn from the past, like Holdgate et al [2011]’s finding
that Port Phillip was closed at Nepean Bay Bar until breached 1000 years
ago, suggesting how Melbourne can be protected from 20m sea level rise

28. Questions?
Suggestions!