this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Most people expect gradual change when many things in life are more like punctuated equilibrium.
Stable state despite gradual change in underlying conditions.
Then rapid change to new stable state.
There's also the Ernest Hemmingway quote from The Sun Also Rises:
You've now put a fear in me about my life that I wasn't ready for...
Sorry to do that, but I believe the world makes a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of punctuated equilibrium. It does not make things better, just makes the chaos more understandable.
The dot com bubble.
The housing bubble.
Basically every economic bubble all the way back to tulip mania.
The Arab Spring.
The changes in the USA post 9/11.
And most disturbing of all, the recent rapid swing of pretty much all environmental indicators into uncharted territory. Our biosphere may be heading into a phase of rapid change.
Nobody wants to change. It's hard and expensive. Until they have to because conditions have required it. Then they change as fast as possible to a new state that works in the new conditions so they can survive.
or they don't survive and die and disappear .... then the lucky ones who were different enough and fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time survive
the magic of evolution ... evolution doesn't care who is smartest, fastest, strongest, wisest or moral ... all it cares about is who survives to procreate and birth the next generation .
This article felt a little more relevant, recommended by wiki on the one you linked: Punctuated equilibrium in social theory