All complex systems—whether natural ecologies, mammalian immune systems, or human economies—have dense and recursive causal connections across multiple scales of organization. These connections create high levels of combinatorial interaction—where many causes operate simultaneously, often synergistically— as well as large numbers of destabilizing (“positive”) and stabilizing (“negative”) feedback loops. The result is disproportionate causation: sometimes a small change in one component of a complex system causes an enormous shift in the system’s overall behavior; but other times, even large changes in multiple components produce little effect. Complexity scientists call this phenomenon “nonlinear behavior.”
Nonlinearity is a key reason why complex systems like Earth’s climate, forests, and fisheries, and our global financial and political systems sometimes shift or “flip” unexpectedly from one macro-state to another. Scientists generally cannot predict with any precision when such “critical transitions” might happen; they might know that the likelihood of a flip is rising but have little idea when the event will occur. Also, these flips are usually extremely difficult to reverse. When a pandemic strikes, fishery collapses, Earth’s climate reorganizes itself, or a population’s predominant worldview shifts, the system in question likely cannot be returned to its former state, even if the conditions that caused the flip are wound back entirely.
Taken together, these features of our planetary socio-ecological system present humanity with extreme dangers—and extreme opportunities. The dangers arise from the real possibility that this system is close to an irreversible shift to a new pathway that would radically degrade human well-being and civilization’s long-term prospects. The opportunities arise from the enormous leverage available in highly nonlinear systems, if the right intervention points can be found and exploited. In today’s complex, hyper-connected global systems, a series of precisely targeted and timed interventions could produce a virtuous cascade of change that helps flip humanity onto a far more positive path.
Unfortunately, complex social systems are usually so opaque that key intervention points are invisible; and even in the rare circumstances where they’re visible, means of exploiting them are not obvious. The Cascade Institute confronts both challenges.