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[[File:Path dependence 1.png|450px|frameless|center]] <br> | [[File:Path dependence 1.png|450px|frameless|center]] <br> | ||
[[File:Path dependence 2.png|450px|frameless|center]] | [[File:Path dependence 2.png|450px|frameless|center]] | ||
}}{{d|Path-dependent|/pɑːθ-dɪˈpɛndənt/|adj|}} | }}{{d|Path-dependent|/pɑːθ-dɪˈpɛndənt/|adj|}}{{c|newsletter draft}} | ||
Of a circumstance, that its coming about can only be explained by the sequence of events and contributing factors that lead to it; that it cannot be justified or explained by reference only to existing conditions. | Of a circumstance, that its coming about can only be explained by the sequence of events and contributing factors that lead to it; that it cannot be justified or explained by reference only to existing conditions. | ||
The | The classic case is, of course, evolution by natural selection: re-run the tape from the beginning and you would ''not'' get the same result. | ||
This is the difference between [[linearity]] and [[complexity]]. A linear reaction, you can predict. Components are independent: they do not depend on or react to each other. Given the same inputs, the output will be the same. Hence the scientific predictability of ''force = mass v acceleration''. A complex one you cannot: different components of complex systems interact with each other in non-linear ways. Each component behaves differently — is influenced — by the behaviour of the other components. The landscape “dances”. The same fact pattern can create entirely different outcomes. Hence the usual routine can unexpectedly go haywire. | |||
Unexpectedly non-linearity propels for much popular fiction: write a story outline from the following prompt: “Farm labourer acquires some second-hand machinery for use on his uncle’s farm. It malfunctions”. Where did you get to? Forty five years ago, a guy tried that, got to “Kid saves galaxy?” and has made, at last count, $51 billion dollars out of it: a kind of meta non-linearity in itself. | |||
For most things in our [[Complexity|complex]] world, the way things turned out — how we got to this pretty pass — depended on the coincidental interaction and juxtaposition of unrelated factors in the ecosystem. We may not like the QWERTY keyboard, or [[Get off Twitter|Twitter]], but we are stuck with it. | |||
Removing it is not a simple appeal to dispassionate logic, or the prevailing cultural mores, but requires more path-dependence. The longer it has been around, generally, the more deeply will it be embedded in the cultural, political or even biological layers of humanity, and the more concerted, insistent and patient will be the effort to change it need to be. | |||
Path dependency can be misused in at least two different ways: by extrapolating the future by reference to the past, and by attempting to change the past in an attempt to reconfigure the present. Neither will work. | |||
===Extrapolating from the past: backtesting=== | |||
[[Backtesting]] is a naked way of trying to solve for the ''future'' by extrapolating from the past. | [[Backtesting]] is a naked way of trying to solve for the ''future'' by extrapolating from the past. | ||
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But note the mode of discovery: static; historical; final; determinate. Data can tell you how things ''were''. | But note the mode of discovery: static; historical; final; determinate. Data can tell you how things ''were''. | ||
===Re-framing the past=== | |||
===Causal [[determinism]]=== | ===Causal [[determinism]]=== | ||
We accept “causal [[determinism|regularity]]” — that science yields truth: that one thing regularly leads to another — because the alternative seems to deny the apparent operation of the universe. | We accept “causal [[determinism|regularity]]” — that science yields truth: that one thing regularly leads to another — because the alternative seems to deny the apparent operation of the universe. | ||
But even here the fossil record flatters to deceive: the lattice of potential causes is far more complex than our wildest dreams — we form those just from what we see and hear — but that is an infinitesimal sliver of all possible events out there. Our histories are works of imaginative fiction. This is why historians do not agree. We make our histories; we do not ''find'' them. | But even here, the fossil record flatters to deceive: the lattice of potential causes is far more [[Complexity|complex]] than our wildest dreams — we form those just from what we see and hear — but that is an infinitesimal sliver of all possible events out there. Our histories are works of imaginative fiction. This is why historians do not agree. We make our histories; we do not ''find'' them. | ||
By looking at a unitary history (that we made up), in hindsight we miss the contingency from which it was fashioned. Once it is laid down, it looks inevitable. It looks pre-ordained. This is a curiously ''religious'' idea. | By looking at a unitary history (that we made up), in hindsight we miss the contingency from which it was fashioned. Once it is laid down, it looks inevitable. It looks pre-ordained. This is a curiously ''religious'' idea. | ||
But though there is but one past — whether or not we can know what it is — still there remains, from any given present, an ''infinity'' of futures. | |||
The temptation, when we look at such a concrete past, is to see each of the points behind us on that timeline as having determined the remaining history to the present. The extrapolation is that they must determine the future, too. The further back in time a point is, the more momentous it has been in determining our path to here. This seems intuitive: the decisions I made ''yesterday'' had little bearing on where I am today: I was already here. The die was long since cast. | The temptation, when we look at such a concrete past, is to see each of the points behind us on that timeline as having determined the remaining history to the present. The extrapolation is that they must determine the future, too. The further back in time a point is, the more momentous it has been in determining our path to here. This seems intuitive: the decisions I made ''yesterday'' had little bearing on where I am today: I was already here. The die was long since cast. | ||
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But this is not true. | But this is not true. | ||
Since that moment thirty-years ago, when you bought that plane ticket to America, you have had thousands of opportunities to | Since that moment thirty-years ago, when you bought that plane ticket to America, you have had thousands of opportunities to buy a plane ticket home again. That you are still in America is nothing to do with that ticket, and everything to do with the tickets home you haven’t bought since. | ||
We have, and our ancestors had, the ongoing ability to change things daily. ''Everyone'' makes bad decisions. The key is not to be ''defined'' by them. Everyone makes ''good'' decisions, too. Keep the good decisions, do what you can to correct for the bad ones. | We have, and our ancestors had, the ongoing ability to change things daily. ''Everyone'' makes bad decisions. The key is not to be ''defined'' by them. Everyone makes ''good'' decisions, too. Keep the good decisions, do what you can to subsequently correct for the bad ones. | ||
Our permanent aspiration: from here, make more ''good'' decisions than you do bad ones. Improve your ratio. You will not always know at the time. You will learn in hindsight. ''Iterate''. | Our permanent aspiration: from here, make more ''good'' decisions than you do bad ones. Improve your ratio. You will not always know at the time. You will learn in hindsight. ''Iterate''. | ||
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===Pragmatist’s prayer and the infinite game=== | ===Pragmatist’s prayer and the infinite game=== | ||
{{Standpoint capsule}} | |||
Now there is one objection to this, and that is to say its premise is wrong: it rejects the causal principle on which the western enlightenment is founded. For the causal principle leads us to some kind of determinism, by which the future is, loosely or tightly, a consequence of the past. | |||
The “tight” version is a form of [[data modernism]]. Every branch of the world ash of destiny, every atomic reaction, every operating impulse of the universe is, in principle, calculable and that we have not yet done so is down to our own feeble calculating machines. Many serious intellectuals believe this. If it is true, then everything in the future is inevitable, immutable, and there’s nothing to be gained from grousing about it. | |||
The “loose” version still says there are better and worse ways of interacting with the world, they can be — ''must'' be — deduced objectively, that is, without reference to any person’s subjective standpoint regardless of how marginalised, and this is precisely what the social institutions [[standpoint]] theory so criticises are there to so. So, there's nothing to be gained from grousing about it. | |||
===The past as a formal system=== | |||
Not also the idea that the past is a single formal causal chain, that we know about, is is a classic example of legibility in the sense articulated by [[James C. Scott]] in {{br|Seeing Like a State}}. | |||
Articulation of history is necessarily a simplification, and model, a boiling down of an infinity of information into a single digestible [[narrative]]. It necessarily misses things: relegates things; deems things extraneous. But what the dominant narrative things is important and what the community thinks is important are not the same. In the same way that informal systems and interactions, unseen by the executive actors, are critical to the good order and smooth operation of the state, or a business, so are informal, unobserved, and deprioritised interactions fundamental to history. Models ''lie''. | |||
So not only is “the past” — as we articulate it — inert and immutable, it’s not even ''true''. We can, and do, adjust it by changing our account of it. History is written by the winners — but it is a long game and just who is the winner is prone to change. Those who dominate the narrative from time to time decide who the winners are. This is the Orwellian concept: write and re-write and erase our history, whilst insisting on its utter continuity. It may be so that the external history of the universe is immutable — but we have no access to that. We wouldn’t recognise it even if we had it. We can only tell ourselves stories, and they have internal meaning, but no transcendent one. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Empathy and compassion]] | |||
*[[Evolution]] | *[[Evolution]] | ||
{{C|Systems theory}} | {{C|Systems theory}} | ||
{{Ref}} | |||