alt Hacker NewsOn this topic, I can never end recommending Adam Curtis's series "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace", and on this topic of "bounce back" the second episode in that series.
The concept of "natural equilibrium" is a 1950s cybernetic machine fantasy projected onto the natural world rather than an accurate reflection of ecological reality. We can model the world in the language of system theory, but the models we make there might not have much to say about the real world. We can claim that from system theory it follows that there must be an equilibrium (as somewhat of an expert, I can say that even that is not true) and that if we disrupt the system, things will eventually go back to that equilibrium. And if we don't see it, we just needed to wait longer.
The whole stack of logic is not really build on any proper reasoning. The parallel with economics based on the "homo economicus" is striking, also there you reason from an ideal model and try to make inductive statements about the real world, which in many places directly conflict with observation. The "eco-system" and "natural equilibrium" stem from this approach of applying system theory to ecology, and are ideas which are now _very_ ingrained in western thinking, but which are obviously off.
Here is the start of that second episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgoereMDUJ0
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> We can claim that from system theory it follows that there must be an equilibrium (as somewhat of an expert, I can say that even that is not true) and that if we disrupt the system, things will eventually go back to that equilibrium. And if we don't see it, we just needed to wait longer.
Even if we do make that claim, from practice in systems theory we should know that some systems have multiple potential equilibrium. If a system is perturbed, it may come to rest at a different equilibrium that is much less desirable.
I've worked with mechanical and computer systems where the ordering and timing of applied loads makes a significant difference to observed behavior. Sometimes you have to stop and restart the whole system when it ends up at an undesired equilibrium.
In the natural environment, stopping and restarting in a controlled manner is not something entirely in our control.
This is the story of how one user spent too much time writing why he became disenchanted with Adam Curtis, how he had been a longtime fan. But eventually he saw through the same smoke and mirrors. He learned to see it all as uncharitable nonsense to convince others that technocracy is unassailable. He thought the parody was funny.
But this was a fantasy.
(Curtis's entire ouevre can be summarized in 18 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YSwCJIpSXQ )
Doesn't the premise of bouncing back imply an ideal state to bounce back to?
And there we have it: ideal state for one species? the most possible species? longevity for individuals or the species?
The myth of some "natural" (the word literally means without human influence) state that is desired/better is somewhat ironic, right?
Any ideal state brings with it subjective criteria.
> if we disrupt the system, things will eventually go back to that equilibrium. And if we don't see it, we just needed to wait longer.
Even if that's true, quite a bit rides on how long "longer" is. If "longer" is a million years, that's not exactly good news.
A bit of caution with this line of thinking, because I was blindsided by it after more than decade of hand waving away "academics"
When you have the mind of "the models are wrong", you tend to be brought there by select counter examples, and in that space you only feed on counter examples. "The experts are wrong (and you can be right in 15 minutes if you consume this media!)" is abundant.
The actual reality is "the models work great until they don't". Not "the models don't work."
Ironically, the experts, the ones building the "wrong" models, tend to be the ones most aware of this.