PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND THE REGULATOR
SUCCESSION OF GROWTH PROCESSES
FIGURE 7.1 Schematic representation of S-curve jumping. The bell-shaped
curves at the bottom are the life cycles that correspond to the processes.
the life cycles—the rates of growth—that correspond to the cascading
growth processes.
It should not come as a surprise that the seeds of a new cycle are
sown right after the peak of the previous one. The emerging pattern, a
succession of wave crests, suggests that sustained growth and evolution
itself is not a flat uniform process.
WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS
A succession of life cycles, as indicated at the bottom of Figure 7.1,
traces a wavy outline. With life cycles representing the rate of growth
(for example, the number of units of a particular product sold per
month), the peaks of the waves imply that there is a greater frequency
of occurrences at that time. A many-crest wave implies successive periods
of clusters of occurrences. Proverbs in many cultures have paid tribute
to phenomena of clustering, which may be contested by statistician purists.
Events that normally should be randomly distributed over time
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