Take a number of random people, put them in a room, and let them mull about for a while. When you check up on them later, what you’ll generally find is that the people have formed a bunch of different groups, each centered around some common interest. You might find, for example, a group of artists discussing the merits of different mediums of expression, a group of techies discussing the possibilities of ChatGPT, a group of businessmen talking about how to exploit the latest tax or zoning law, or a group of football fans discussing the outcome of the Superbowl.
There were no instructions to the people given upon entering the room that led them to form these groups. Rather, the groups emerged organically from mutual interactions among the various individuals in the room. You’ll find this type of emergent order in any biological or social system.
The order that emerges from the interactions of elements in a biological or social system depends on several factors. For example, people don’t act randomly; they act with purpose to achieve some goal. This means the order that emerges depends on the intent of the participants. Also, people don’t act in a vacuum; they act within a larger contextual environment. This means the order that emerges depends on such factors as
Geographic factors: Weather and terrain
Demographic and cultural factors: Age, income, education, culture (values, social norms)
Technological factors: Access to sanitation, healthcare, transportation, communications
Market factors: Access to free markets, raw materials, capital, consumers
Government factors: The nature of laws and regulations, legal systems
I’m interested in understanding how order emerges in social systems and especially how the environment shapes the outcomes that emerge.
Once we understand how the environment shapes outcomes, then we can figure out how to change the environment to get better outcomes.
My thoughts and writings tend to focus on two areas of emergent order:
(i) How societies adopt and adapt to technology
(ii) How the role of cannabis in society has evolved over time
