Well, to be clear, I put "phase transition" in scare quotes because I think it's a terrible phrase and a bad analogy to pretty much anything in our psycho-socio-political world. It may even be a bad analogy for collections of organisms, though I'm less confident there. So the answer to your last question "Isn't this the lesson of a phase transition?" is *Mu*, a nonsense answer for a nonsense question.
To answer your first question, though, I would opt for the latter, where the pet-owner is identical to the environment housing the wild populations. Be sure I'm not analogizing between society and the pet owner, but the *environment* and the pet owner. It's the environment that develops canals into which the pets drift. It's the environment that develops "hot spots" that churn. When I mentioned "partly designed" in the last post, I implied that the environment contains society, including all the teleological-with-limited-scope parts built by individuals and groups of individuals. I have no idea how well intention scales, though. Those of us who've been lucky enough to find ourselves inside canals are the pets. Those of us out there in the churn are wild. On 3/23/20 9:21 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Remember that this dog has designed his own kennel. It is this dog that > determines the time and route of the walks, where I stop to pee, and how long > I get to smell the post. I am living in a world of my own designing. > Unless, of course, you want to make "society" the analogue for "owner" in the > dog metaphor, in which case, the implication is that the choices I think I am > making are only a small proportion of those that are actually being made for > me. I think I am deciding which post to pee on but in fact, it's mostly been > decided for me. But then who exactly is this "society" dude? As we work > this metaphor, which way do we want to go? > > > > I want somebody to tackle the paradox inherent in the notion of "planning > across a phase transition". We are molecules in the warming pot, rising and > falling gently in the gentle heat from below, being knocked by our neighbors > below and in turn knocking our neighbors above. Life is good, if a little > boring. Then somebody turns on the heat below, and we feel this strange urge > to line up and form ranks, some ranks marching upward toward the top of pot, > some ranks returning downward. And then somebody turns up the heat again, > and our world goes crazy. Our neighborhood is strewn all over the pot and > many of us are cast out of the pot altogether. Perhaps, if the heat remains > high for very long, all of us are lost to the pot. But perhaps, somebody > comes and turns the heat down. Again we start to form in to ranks, marching > to the bottom of the pot, then returning downward, left-right, left-right. > But now those with whom we march are strangers, all the familiar faces are > gone. And when the pot goes cold, there we are, exactly as we were before, > only with different neighbors. > > > > Isn't this the lesson of a phase transition? /Tout ca change; tous ca reste > la meme/? -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
