[p2p-research] dangers of connectivity

[marc fawzi]

Plus the human brain is the most connected living organism and the density
of neurons (and density of the inter-connections) determine the "processing"
capacity (similar to number of processors and size of memory in computers)

More connections mean more robust response to impulses/events and more
robust response could mean very large response for every single event, but
that does not mean that the system is more prone to disaster, just more
robust in its response (not more severe)

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 8:54 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> A few questions...
>
> Wouldn't the increase in extreme events with big effects be as likely to
> produce extreme positive effects as extreme negative effects?  Remembering
> that the negative ones are not necessarily negative from the perspective of
> the perpetrator (e.g. 911), so the two are not distinguishable as
> categories, only by ethical judgements.  Extreme positive events might be
> things like the collapse of eastern European Stalinism, protest eruptions
> such as the recent unrest in Greece, sudden breakthroughs in science or
> other kinds of scholarship (for instance, finding a cure for AIDS or
> cancer), a sudden switch in forms of life towards sustainability, etc.
> ...  (just noticed one of the comments I hadn't read says the same thing)
>
> Another point:  since the disruptive/transformative effects of "black swan"
> events are due largely to their effects (911 itself changed nothing, it was
> the US reaction that caused global shifts; financial crises such as the
> Asian, Russian, Mexican, Enron and DotCom crises only reverberate the way
> they do because of their impact on "business confidence", i.e. because they
> scare other stockbrokers/investors into selling), wouldn't the growing
> frequency of such events lessen their impact?  This certainly seems true of
> terrorism, i.e., one terror attack can have a huge impact only when no
> attacks are normally happening - there seems to be a lot more hysteria about
> terrorism in Britain today post-7/7, than in the 1980s when IRA attacks were
> almost routine - we don't even hear in the west about the latest events in
> contexts of endemic insurgency such as Kashmir, Chechnya and northeast
> India, or even of each suicide bombing in Iraq - the growing frequency at
> certain sites makes the event "normal".  The same effect is suggested in the
> sociology of deviance, i.e., that frequency of deviance reduces its deviant
> character and "shock value".  The dynamics of "newsworthiness" would also be
> crucial here, i.e., newsworthiness decreases with the frequency of events,
> and as newsworthiness decreases, so does the likelihood of drastic
> responses.
>
> bw
> Andy
>
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>


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Marc Fawzi
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