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A simple system is one where at least one actor is sufficiently intelligent, knowledgeable and powerful to unilaterally alter the dynamics of the system based on a predictive model of what the system will do. Perhaps we might more meaningfully say that a system is simple or complex relative to a given actor if that actor has the capacity to unilaterally alter the system based on their understanding thereof. A complex system (a system complex relative to a given actor) is one where no actor can unilaterally alter the system based on their understanding thereof (though they may be able to alter their own place within the system).
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The mere existence of key agents, I argue, transforms the complex system into a simple one (for some players, for some purposes). Not that those key agents can act flawlessly, but rather, that their size and knowledge makes modeling the system impossible without taking into account their ability to alter whatever temporary rules seem to be evident. Investment banks may not have known all of the consequences of their actions in the mid-2000s, but they had a much better sense than the rest of us, and at least some of those actors (e.g. Goldman Sachs) were capable of timing the bubble to maximum advantage (or minimum disadvantage). The Fed responded in turn, guided by its own models (models here being both quantitative, econometric and structural models but also more heuristic or cultural models of how-things-generally-work). The financial collapse of 2007-2009 was at once a story of millions of individual actors slowly changing behaviors (home buyers and individual mortgage brokers) and the story of influential policy decisions by a handful of organizations. The latter part is not characteristic of a complex system but rather a simple one.
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The accident at Fukushima Daiichi on March 11 implicates me, somehow, much more than did either Three Mile Island in 1979 or Chernobyl in 1986, both well-etched into my memory.
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I can find no escape from Fukushima Daiichi. Words I hoped never to read in a news report, like loss of coolant accident (LOCA), exposed core, hydrogen explosion: Here they are. Except for those who can identify ways to contribute directly to the management of the disaster, we scientists have only one job right now -- to help governments, journalists, students, and the man and woman on the street understand in what strange ways we have changed their world.
"This is a collection of papers translated from the Russian with some revised and updated contributions. Written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, the volume outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. According to the authors, official discussions from the International Atomic Energy Agency and associated United Nations' agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments. "
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9VScience ISAH Intro
The human body is very compl...
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