[FRIAM] hot time in town tonight

[Marcus Daniels]

Glen writes:

< I suppose one could make an argument in the form of renormalizing an infinite number of variables. Let's imagine society is describable by an infinitely long math expression (a right hand side only, not implying an equation), where each term has a coefficient, modifying its contribution to whatever set of composition functions the expression uses (+,⨂,⊙, …). But at any given time or locale only a finite number of the coefficients have non-zero value. Then we can think of an apocalypse (or efflorescence) might be a shift in which coefficients have zero values. Maybe the number of non-zero coefficients shrinks (or grows, respectively). Maybe a discrete event might happen to zero out all the non-zero terms and non-zero another set of zeroed terms. Or maybe non-zero-ness smoothly flows around the coefficients. IDK. But if you think this way, words like "apocalypse" kinda lose their intensity. >

The relatively high-level composition functions might involve, say, actions of the government, and the relatively low-level the functioning of a calcium pump.   Counting those functions that involve humans as distinct from other material or forms of life is arbitrary but if all those functions became un-callable due to typing considerations,  then that's one way to define an apocalypse:  Everyone is dead.   If the economy collapses completely, or it becomes impossible to feed most people, that might also reasonably be labeled an apocalypse.  (Simply tabulating what is human-involved means tracking the dynamics of things:  Unwinding the stack of those compositions and doing attribution, that is hard by itself.)   One could do broader attribution to count other species, like with the Chicxulub impactor.   I was thinking more on the boundary of extinction when those that have the awareness to fight or flight do so, and that is an indicator of their general fitness.

On the other hand, if there are variations in the number of highly-correlated deep compositions versus less-correlated deep compositions, that seems more in the realm of politics.   Serious but not apocalyptic. 

Marcus