PART VI: FEEDBACK LOOPS AND FREE MARKETS

Chapter 23: Spontaneous Order

1. A slime mold is just one phase in the lifecycle of an amoeba species. Since an amoeba moves so slowly, as soon as it has engulfed all the bacteria within immediate reach, it begins to starve. But instead of curling up to die, it pumps out pulses of a chemical distress call, cyclical AMP.

2. Nearby amoebas sense the AMP molecules. They respond by moving toward the source of the chemical wave and emit their own pulses of cyclical AMP. As many as 100,000 amoebas stream toward each other until their bodies merge together into a slime mold.

3. The slime mold fascinates us because it challenges our deepest intuitions about consciousness and control. The slime mold's self organization makes us face the ultimate question: is it really possible that an unconscious, spontaneous phenomenon brought forth a natural world of such awesome diversity, beauty and balance?

4. The notion that no one is in control - that economic order spontaneously emerges from the chaotic interactions of millions of individuals and firms -is quite hard to swallow.

5. Feedback-loop equations are "nonlinear." Instead of steady curves, nonlinear formulas generate wildly erratic, zigzagging lines. Few bothered to crunch these numbers because of the unpredictability of nonlinear equations makes the effort pointless. The great tragedy in this is the most natural phenomena are nonlinear. Much of physics, most of chemistry, and all of biology falls outside linear science.

6. Chaos is not disorder, it is a higher form of order. Chaos covers everything that seems to be disorderly but in fact adheres to underlying patterns. The weather is a perfect example.

7. A diseased heart beats with extreme regularity. It is the healthy heart that beats chaotically. Brain waves of the mentally healthy are chaotic, while those of an epileptic during a seizure are regular.

8. Instead of viewing the body as a remarkably complex machine controlled by the brain, new scientists see a collection of 10,000 billion cells incessantly conversing via chemical messages.

9. A market is something more than a sequence of independent trades. A market represents the collective behavior of its traders.

10. Without a central controller, a flexible and efficient use of resources spontaneously emerges from buying and selling among independent agents.