Sublime

here: these very actions of agents’ exploring, changing, adapting, and experimenting further change the outcome, and they’d have to then re-adapt and re-adjust.

as cities grow and their networks evolve, the area or volume of the networks needed to keep them functionally connected tends to become smaller on a per capita basis. For example, in larger cities more people can share the same bus or segment of road or sewer pipe.

Once again the important fact is knowing the existence of these nonlinearities, not trying to model them.

Effectiveness replaces morals as a yardstick for decision-making: the better I understand the way the world operates, the more I can achieve; the best decision is the one that begets the highest outcome.

Synopsis of the Four Parts of This Book

But the way in which complex phenomena are hidden, beyond masking by space and time, is through nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence—a deck of attributes that have proved ill suited to our intuitive and augmented abilities to grasp and to comprehend.

Going where no one has is a wicked problem. There is no well-defined formula or perfect system of feedback to follow. It’s like the stock market that way; if you want the sky highs, you have to tolerate a lot of lows.

Human nature requires catastrophes to jolt us into change—but with some catastrophes, notably climate change, by the time that happens it may be too late.