Physicist Geoffrey West speaks at an FQXi conference on time about complexity and scaling laws. He covers how metabolism, growth and lifespan scale across organisms and how the same mathematics applies to cities and companies.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN commenters recommend it as an accessible introduction to scaling laws and to why cities keep growing while companies and organisms eventually die.
“For a great, accessible intro talk on this topic, check out Geoffrey West's”HN comment, 2015
“Geoffrey West who has an interesting high-level physics approach to this issue”
Comprehensive 40 minute West talk on scaling in organisms and cities.
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Even if you calculated as embodied energy instead of just looking at the energy spent directly on a task? Because a large part of the "inefficiency" of living creatures is physical maintenance of the body. If that is included for machines as well, I'm not so sure if they're better off. For now, of course - as soon as we realise energy is a real constraint, we'll surely start optimising for it. The third link I posted references Geoffrey West who has an interesting high-level physics approach to this issue, but it doesn't really do justice to his points. But I figured posting this 40 minute one, which is much more comprehensive, would be a bit much to ask: this video (also has a lot more phycisist's arrogance in the form of cursing, which I find entertaining myself) Actually, given that city energy spending also grows sublinearly, robot and AI networks probably would as well. So that argument likely won't hold against it.
RecommendsvanderZwanSep 2015
“for those interested to know more, I recommend looking up Geoffrey B. West's stuff on complexity.”
Puts animal size scaling in a wider context.
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This is why the largest animals in the world live in the sea: it's a better cooling system! Also, for those interested to know more, I recommend looking up Geoffrey B. West's stuff on complexity. It mentions the same things as this article and puts them in a wider context: this video
RecommendsRadimSep 2015
“For a great, accessible intro talk on this topic, check out Geoffrey West's”
Accessible intro talk on complexity and scaling.
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For a great, accessible intro talk on this topic, check out Geoffrey West's "On Complexity": this video
RecommendsschiffernJun 2017
“Geoffrey West makes a compelling argument that it's due to the scaling laws around growth itself.”
West explains why companies eventually stagnate via scaling laws.
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> It's certainly not easy to unseat a powerful company, but it also seems difficult to stay at the top. Whether it's inefficiency, inability to pivot to new ways of doing things, or just markets that dry up as they're replaced by something else, companies have a hard time staying in such powerful positions in our society for long. Geoffrey West makes a compelling argument that it's due to the scaling laws around growth itself. The capitalist system demands exponential growth, but companies eventually reach a size where all their resources are devoted to maintaining existing "biomass." The exact scaling depends on the scaling properties of the networks that "feed" each "cell" of the system — circulatory/respiratory networks for animals, infrastructural networks for civilizations, social network for companies/cities. Quite frankly most of the articles on Geoffrey West's work are hand-wavey bullshit, but he outlines it in this talk (including addressing this very question). this video
RecommendsschiffernAug 2017
“delivering a much better explanation of his research on socio-biological scaling, growth, and sustainability than thepop sci treatments occasionally posted here.”
West's own explanation of socio-biological scaling, better than pop-sci.
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I thought that sounded familiar. Geoffrey West gave a talk there, delivering a much better explanation of his research on socio-biological scaling, growth, and sustainability than thepop sci treatments occasionally posted here. this video
Cites itschiffernAug 2016
“West's space filling fractal hypothesis predicts dozens of non-obvious scaling laws, not just metabolic power.”
West's fractal hypothesis predicts many scaling laws, including lifespan.
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>Larger organisms don't need to generate as much heat as smaller ones, because heat dissipation occurs across surface area, which increases as the square of mass, whereas heat generation increases as the cube (assuming a spherical cow, but close enough.) Except that hypothesis doesn't predict the correct exponent. If that were the reason metabolic power would scale as mass^(2/3), but it actually scales as mass^(3/4). link West's space filling fractal hypothesis predicts dozens of non-obvious scaling laws, not just metabolic power. this video >the mitochondria of a human are not that different from those of a rat, or even an earthworm. West is acutely aware of this. In the talk I linked above he describes biological lifespans in terms of the relationship between the energy required to synthesize ATP and kT (ie the Boltzmann constant times ambient temperature, being the average energy of a particle due to random thermal motion). The trick is in explaining quantitatively why those universal biological facts scale over size and time with the sometimes bizarre scaling factors observed. It does boil down to physics of course, but there's a lot more to it than just heat dissipation.
Cites itschiffernAug 2016
“He's compared societal progress to a series of treadmills.”
West's treadmill analogy for accelerating innovation cycles and collapse.
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>So have we avoided it, or are we just delaying it? ... Perhaps the next crash just gets to be harder as a result. In fact, this is exactly what West suggests (just not in this relatively puffy treatment of his ideas). He's compared societal progress to a series of treadmills. In order to keep up with the necessary economic growth rate the treadmills are constantly getting faster (evolutionary progress) and we periodically have to jump from one treadmill to another (revolutionary innovation) and we must switch treadmills at an ever-increasing pace (shortening technology cycles). The problem of course being that you eventually have a heart attack. this video
Cites itvanderZwanMay 2018
“Or maybe the 3/4 scaling law[1][2].”
Cited as source for the 3/4 metabolic scaling law.
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The lower on the graph, the more energy efficient. The further right on the graph, the heavier the object. So the trend is towards more efficiency per kilogram for heavier animals, presumably due to square-cube law[0]. Or maybe the 3/4 scaling law[1][2]. [0] link [1] link [2] this video
