Complexity and Extinction: Pigs in a Truck

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I neared the exit for Valley Forge and passed a truck of hogs. They seemed at ease, large pink masses, some of them asleep behind wooden slats while traveling 60 MPH to slaughter. Habituation, overeating, and their companionship likely quieted any single one of them that might have become agitated by his plight.

Mutual familiarity and the truck walls had common function -- that of reducing the variability in the behavior of any one hog. No escapes, reassurance that all is fine, boys; we're in this together. Their situation was not much different from that of telephone pole about a mile away from my home. The pole was sheared by a recent storm but did not fall because of a dozen wires strung across its top.

Kauffman (At Home in the Universe) describes biological switches ... too little connection between adjacent decision units means rapid, heightened variability in the circuit's behavior. Too many incterconnections and variability is reduced quickly to zero. The range between chaotic behavior and stasis is called a phase transition and is quite narrow -- it commonly occupies a range between 2.5 and 3.5 interconnections.

There are many many examples of phase transitions around us. Water is a phase transition between ice and steam. Life occupies a narrow temperature zone in which growth and replication are possible and the laws of natural selection can operate. The ideal relationship between a husband and wife is a relatively narrow one between too much independence and too much subservience by either partner. The concept of an Us/Them Chip represents a narrow phase transition in which other people are either a friend or an adversary but rarely allowed to be some of both.

It's often great to be in the center of a phase transition, to nudge oneself one direction or another, towards stability or instability in a relationship, a career, or a hobby. It's no darn fun being totally alone (a consequence of adaptations and natural selection -- a chimp alone is often soon dead) and it's not fun being mired by debt, children, housekeeping, magazine subscriptions, club meetings, and grading papers.(1) Nearly every living creature seems to resist confinement; I see no difference if the confinement is a physical imposition or a product of "responsibility." Rats get ulcers more reliably from immobilization in a wire mesh than they do from random electric shocks. I suspect many of us physiologically react in the same manner.

Despite my thoughts, the hogs are likely dead by now. Likewise, we may accompany them, cruising along, drinking petroleum, producing lots of children, cutting timber, and heating the plant to the extent that the Gulf Stream shuts down as it has in the past and at intervals that seem to precede glaciation over most of Europe and much of North America. But, why worry? We're in this together, our adaptations make us invincible. So acted the dinosaurs.

Notes:

1) Nathan Azrin used to treat alcoholics with exactly this principle. He loaded them with 5 subscriptions, 3 jobs, and several clubs. There was no drinking so long as the time was filled. There was also little option for loneliness or for idleness to become problems. The saw "Idle hands are the devil's workshop" is perhaps a reflection of complexity phenomena.

Rescuing a trapped housewife may at times require cutting her chore list, stacking her children into a hierarchy, and eliminating some of the relatives that she routinely consoles. Such things were once accomplished in small groups and can be managed today in the same manner. Day care probably doesn't hurt the kids if certain boundary conditions for emotional support, meaningful activity, and effective discipline are met.

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