Publish at March 09 2020 Updated March 03 2022
Extreme events, despite their often dramatic nature, do not arrive without warning. They are prepared over long periods of time and begin to show warning signs well before their arrival. But these signs, the inertia of the system absorbs them or the operators ignore them or, better yet, find qualities and "rational" explanations that have nothing to do with reality or compensate for them to the best of their ability, but without changing the parameters at their source, which inevitably leads to disaster, crisis, depression, breakdown.
But by paying attention to the warning signs and changing the conditions at the right time, most of these disasters can be prevented. If "To govern is to foresee", then surely we can govern better with the help of a science of prediction.
Didier Sornette is a professor at the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risk at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and a professor at the Swiss Institute of Finance and an associate professor at the Department of Physics and the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich. He is also a bubble chaser and king dragon fighter. King dragons are seemingly unpredictable and out of the ordinary events, such as earthquakes, epileptic seizures, financial crises or mechanism failures.
It clearly demonstrates that it is possible to systematically identify the warning signs of crises and, sometimes, to be able to intervene on the right levers to change a few fundamental parameters that will restabilize the system.
These signs make it possible to effectively foresee the eventuality of an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. It is then wise to enact preventive measures or changes in operation. For example, after several catastrophic eruptions of the Kelut volcano, in 1919 the Dutch undertook to dig a tunnel to drain the volcanic lake that formed after each eruption, thereby limiting the damage of subsequent eruptions. In this case, the warning signs were obvious enough: in this rainy region, the lake filled up between each eruption, making them particularly devastating.
In the case of mechanical systems, it is a matter of identifying the source of stray vibrations or micro-cracks and changing the parts involved before they break. In the case of financial, social or environmental crises, it is about changing the critical trends that are unbalancing the system, such as overdraft lending, increasing inequality or extensive exploitation of resources and proposing viable alternatives long before the crisis breaks.
His presentation is quite inspiring.
Have you ever heard of the Feigenbaum constant?
In all systems that can be illustrated by the bifurcation diagrams of chaos theory, this constant can be used to predict when chaos will arrive in such a system. Great right?
You have a growing system, its parameters evolve, and gradually the regularity breaks down and after a certain threshold, becomes apparently random. This threshold respects a constant ! As long as we know how to measure the right parameters, a whole science of prediction develops. You can bet that it won't be long before artificial intelligence takes care of it.
To grasp the scope of this phenomenon, Derek Muller explains it very well:
Infinite progress is not infinite growth. When it's sunny, hot, and humid, the air becomes charged with moisture and energy. You don't need a soothsayer to predict thunderstorms at the end of the day: several parameters become saturated and feverish. Shepherdess, bring in your white sheep.
Currently, the number of parameters approaching their limit is increasing. The environment, the economic system, the social system and even the intellectual availability of the people who are overly solicited, are all approaching their limits. It doesn't take a great forecaster to figure out that we are headed for an event of uncommon proportions, a super dragon king, unless we bridle it before it's too late.
Kate Raworth, an economist "who has switched allegiances," tries to make us understand that prosperity is not growth. What to do when increasing income and possessions no longer really offer any benefits, except for a minority?
Prosperity considers the quality of life, its continuity, pleasure, sociability, sharing, participation and many other things of the art of living. The myth of infinite growth on a finite planet requires a shift from material growth to growth of the imagination, which is truly limitless.
Forests grow and then balance and begin to become increasingly rich, complex, thriving and resilient environments. Trees do not continue to grow indefinitely; their ambitions are transforming. The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, and then what? Human ambitions are sometimes tinged with vanity. It is likely that vanity and other foibles are among the harbingers of disaster.
Dragon kings, ultimately predictable and controllable. Wouldn't you like a little more predictability in our future?
References
Didier Sornette and the predictability of dragon kings
https://www.ted.com/talks/didier_sornette_how_we_can_predict_the_next_financial_crisis/discussion?%5D
Veritasium - This equation will change the way you see the world
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk
Kate Raworth - A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow
https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow
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