Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen |  | Author: Mark Buchanan
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
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Seller: slickrockmedia
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 47420
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0609809989
Dewey Decimal Number: 620
EAN: 9780609809983
ASIN: 0609809989
Publication Date: November 5, 2002
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Product Description
Why do catastrophes happen? What sets off earthquakes, for example? What about mass extinctions of species? The outbreak of major wars? Massive traffic jams that seem to appear out of nowhere? Why does the stock market periodically suffer dramatic crashes? Why do some forest fires become superheated infernos that rage totally out of control?
Experts have never been able to explain the causes of any of these disasters. Now scientists have discovered that these seemingly unrelated cataclysms, both natural and human, almost certainly all happen for one fundamental reason. More than that, there is not and never will be any way to predict them.
Critically acclaimed science journalist Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world. From humble beginnings studying the physics of sandpiles, scientists have learned that an astonishing range of things–Earth’s crust, cars on a highway, the market for stocks, and the tightly woven networks of human society–have a natural tendency to organize themselves into what’s called the “critical state,” in which they are poised on what Buchanan describes as the “knife-edge of instability.” The more places scientists have looked for the critical state, the more places they’ve found it, and some believe that the pervasiveness of instability must now be seen as a fundamental feature of our world.
Ubiquity is packed with stories of real-life catastrophes, such as the huge earthquake that in 1995 hit Kobe, Japan, killing 5,000 people; the forest fires that ravaged Yellowstone National Park in 1988; the stock market crash of 1987; the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs; and the outbreak of World War I. Combining literary flair with scientific rigor, Buchanan introduces the researchers who have pieced together the evidence of the critical state, explaining their ingenious work and unexpected insights in beautifully lucid prose.
At the dawn of this new century, Buchanan reveals, we are witnessing the emergence of an extraordinarily powerful new field of science that will help us comprehend the bewildering and unruly rhythms that dominate our lives and may even lead to a true science of the dynamics of human culture and history.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Great Insight, Relating Scientific Phenomena to Human Systems March 7, 2010
Citizen John (Washington, DC)
Buchanan's major contribution is his relation of scientific phenomena to human systems. This reminds me of the Ancient Greek studies that produced the Golden Mean and then applied it to much of life.
Earthquakes and landslides in particular, perhaps becuase there allow for certain types of measurement, were used to describe cyclical events. If the pressure builds on a system past a certain point, any small event might trigger the violent re-ordering of the system. Of course, all that read this book are probably thinking about the market. Market gurus heavily recommended this book.
The implication is that we cannot predict when a financial accident will occur, only that there's always another one going to happen. Also, the higher the level of the market, relative to other things, the greater the pressure on it to experience a financial accident that could begin from an otherwise non-significant event.
The state of the markets today seem to support Buchanan's ideas. One sees something in the news about a small country or a single company that appears unable to meet its debt obligations. Then the markets decline perhaps 3% and threaten to make it the big one if other bad news piggybacks on this one.
As a result of reading this book, I'm trolling the sites that collect negative news that might potentially sink markets, because I believe those events are out there. I'm avoiding news on celebrities, which is what some great powers have determined will dominate our major news media. But Buchanan's point is to expect the unexpected anyway. Looking for it might be futile since the big events occur quickly and without warning.
excellent read December 7, 2009
M. Chambers (Indonesia)
May be overly simplistic for some but the role of power laws in nature and seemingly in human history is fascinating, and quite timely given small issues recently. Will a small economic issue lead to major crash? Very worthwhile read.
 Sloppy thinking September 15, 2009
Arash Saeidihaghi
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this book cover to cover. This book has too many pages for little content. The thesis of the book could have been explained much more economically. One other problem I have with this book is that it is superfluous if you have read or own a copy of Per Bak's How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality, just that Bak's book is out of print and expensive.
The thesis is that everything in the world (almost everything) is in a self-organized critical state, therefore prone to upheavals caused by minor disturbances, and the latter is logical equivalent of a power-law. Well, let us call "everything is in a self-organized critical state" statement A, and "something follows a power-law" statement B. A straightforward mathematical reasoning can show us that A results in B, or A->B. The book is not able to show us any A->B save for the sand pile games (there are maybe hundreds of its variants in the physics literature), and wants us to believe that since we see empirical evidence of B, then everything is in a self-organized critical state. Of course this could be the case, but it could not be as well. B is not necessary and sufficient condition for A, just because A->B is true. In other words, all the thesis of this book is a speculation about state of the affairs of the world. It is most probably a very plausible thesis, but plausibility is not enough to verify a thesis as this one, because A (self-organized critically) is a mechanistic theory of the world in that state, as we know now, but what excludes any other possible mechanistic theory that would/could/might result in the same power law? The book never even mentions this question, and never even tries to answer it. This is either intellectual indolence or maybe even worse, intellectual dishonesty.
An excellent book, enlightening July 20, 2009
Da Yooper (Michigan)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is one of the few great books I believe any scientists, economists, and intellectuals should read very carefully. It simply connects lots of dots. The author shows a solid understanding in most of the topics he addresses. I wish I could find a hardcopy edition to keep.
Earthquakes, Power Laws and Market Behavior May 6, 2009
Justice Litle (Nevada)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I review this book with a specific message (and specific audience) in mind: The driving insight behind "Ubiquity" is of potential great worth to active traders and investors.
The book is excellently written -- an easy and engaging read. I first read it many years ago, found it effortless to pick up and read again with fresh eyes a year or two on, and am only now returning to review it (in May 2009) having stumbled across an interesting market-related connection. (The book touches on out-of-the blue market crashes, but I suppose it took the awe-inspiring volatility of Q408 and Q109 to really open my eyes to the point in question.)
To briefly summarize the key idea, no one knows how big an earthquake will be before it starts. This is so because the earthquake itself does not know how big it will be until events actually play out.
Earthquake energy feeds off a series of feedback loops, which are in turn driven by a chain of complex interlinked events (plate tectonics, geothermal pressures and whatnot) beneath the earth's surface. If any event in the chain fails to sustain the feedback loop, the earthquake fizzles out.
The same idea applies to wildfires, flu pandemics, and other complex "catastrophic events" of unknown size and duration fueled by myriad complex inputs.
One can perhaps think of an earthquake or a wildfire, then, as the combined result of thousands of hidden domino chains. The ultimate size and destructive power of the event is determined by the combined manner in which all the domino chains fall, and there are far too many inputs (most of them hidden from the human eye) to track.
So the only thing that really governs the ultimate size of earthquakes, wildfires, pandemics, and other complex catastrophic events is something called a "power law"... a sort of linear inverse correlation between the size of an event and the probability of its occurrence.
The power law, in other words, cannot tell you how big the earthquake will be either. But it CAN tell you that the starting conditions for big and small earthquakes often look exactly the same... that big earthquakes occur relatively less often than small ones over time... and that this established relationship between size and frequency remains stable up and down the line.
The market insight that brought "Ubiqity" back to the forefront of my mind is as follows: Major market rallies and declines behave a lot like the phenomena discussed in the book. And thus we can hypothesize that:
1) No one knows in advance how big a rally or decline will be, because the market itself does not know beforehand...
and
2) Major market rallies and declines are ultimately governed by power laws.
This is why it's so hard (if not impossible) to know how far a market will travel -- in either direction, up or down -- if conditions are suitably conducive to a wide range of possible outcomes.
In other words, there's no effective way to predetermine the magnitude of a major market move, without first having a VERY clear sense of all the myriad inputs and all the ways they can combine.
In the case of the monster bear market rally that has been unfolding for nine weeks or so as I write this review, an improbably long chain of positive economic data points fed into a number of other supportive conditions... and thus the stock market equivalent of a giant bullish "earthquake" resulted.
This concept is valuable to traders and investors because it offers a tangible intellectual anchor for a critical market insight. Again, if rallies and declines follow power laws, it doesn't make sense to try and anticipate magnitude ahead of time without a VERY clear sense of what could stop the movement in its tracks.
At the same time, power law governance is instructive in that, while traders and investors cannot reliably predict deeply complex outcomes, they CAN analyze the general conditions necessary for producing a significant outlier event, in the same manner that one can examine conditions conducive to "extreme" outcomes on the natural disaster front.
Just for fun, take the relatively recent (as of this writing) earthquake in Italy for example. There was a scientist who predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before it happened. He was reported to the authorities for "spreading alarm" and forced to take his findings off the internet.
Afterwards the authorities (in deep damage control mode) said the scientist's method of earthquake prediction (involving radon gas) was hopelessly unreliable, mainly because "earthquakes cannot be predicted." And yet they were using the baseline belief that "earthquakes cannot be predicted" as a tautological first principle! Not unlike the way some say that significant market movements can't be predicted... even though clear evidence shows that general conditions can most certainly serve as a "heads up" guide for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
All that to say is, in some ways smart traders and investors are like geologists or forest rangers on the lookout for earthquake-prone / wildfire-prone conditions... persistent tremors, dry underbrush, extreme low humidity, and so on. And then as active market participants, they get involved with the phenomena as it gets underway... but with a healthy respect for catalyst points and potential / probable ranges of outcome, as opposed to an overly anxious fixation on pegging the size of the move.
If you've read this far, I hope I've inspired you to read the book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
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