A lot of these systems will have multiple regimes that they can inhabit so that's called metastability. So it's not completely locked in, but it's in this regime. It's more or less stable. And then with this image of a ball and a cup, you can have a whole bunch of different valleys. You don't know where they are. But if you get knocked out of one, the ball is going to roll down till it finds the bottom of the next valley and it'll stay there. Presumably the economy is another one of those valleys.
A fascinating property of a system's behaviour is its ability to change, and change quickly. For example, how does an economy go from boom to bust so suddenly and unpredictably? That is to say, how does it 'tip' from one behaviour to another? What are these tipping points, and are they really as unpredictable as they seem?
In today's episode, we speak to Tyler Marghetis, Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at the University of California Merced. He pulls apart the underlying reasons why the behaviour of a complex system can radically change. He also poses the question, can you tell when a system is about to tip?
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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.