The concept he discusses of “the edge” is very similar to “edge of chaos” from physics, but has been studied extensively in complexity sciences, specifically complex adaptive systems.
The theory proposes that all complex adaptive systems (CAS) naturally adapt to a state at the “edge of chaos” which is a transition zone between order(stability) and disorder.
The theory proposes this is the zone where maximal learning/innovation/creativity in social systems occur.
We studied complex adaptive systems in 2019, at the time I changed my LinkedIn tag line to : “learning at the edge of chaos” , still have not changed it since then.
all systems that have accumulated complexity did it in an effort to create resiliency to survive/reproduce/continue to exist, which is innately a method of accumulate self-supervised 'learning', when left to dwell to its own emergent methods.
this applies to all systems, from biospheres to food-chains to cells to human evolution.
resiliency is needed for systems to be less fragile against chaotic perturbations, as the most 'complex' (sub) systems are the most impacted by any change without it.
complex systems would fail catastrophically instantly if its resilient sub-systems weren't able to postpone it.
resiliency is the ability to respond to varied input, to face dis-order.
The universe, uncaring, is a dis-orderly increase in entropy. It accumulates, and averages to eventually to act as a sieve, a selective pressure, an edge....a particularly varied input.
Anything that would pressure the system - such as an environment change or competition against itself for a resource constraint - and this selective pressure culls the weakest variations of the system from the pool. Those variations that had the least effective resiliency features, now gone, are quickly replaced, and the system continues to exist.
All complex systems in adversarial conditions must then incentivize resiliency, and the generalized property of being self-reliant; adaptive to variation in input.
This incentive/reward is essentially an iota of agency, a flash of an of objective goal.
intelligence is the ability to reach a goal given varied input states.
The ability to 'learn' is really just how to compile ways to reach a goal, inferring relations between the solutions, then internalizing that inference to later better increase its ability to generalize / respond to varying input.
> learning is _only_ possible at the edge of chaos
Which is what makes math so interesting. The constant stream of finding predictable islands in the unpredictable, and then unpredictable islands (hard problems) in the predictable (seemingly simple easily defined systems).
Math is chaos.
I suppose as we get smarter, and our understanding of the world gets more sophisticated, our survival/growth progress becomes more and more a math exercise.
It has also been posed that the hemispheres of our brain operate at this edge of chaos with one hemisphere aligned with the novel and chaotic, and the other hemisphere aligned with routine and order. Then in this theory as we sleep/dream our brains take the novel and chaotic things we experience and transfer them to the routine and orderly side of the brain. Or something along those lines.
I’m no psychologist but I find the existence of chaos and order in the physical word to be really interesting. It seems like something we would make up as a species, but really there is proof for it in the universe around us.
As I have gotten older, I have learned that "It Depends" is really a mantra for life.
I know of some folks that are dealing with mental health challenges. They are all dirt poor, on SSI/Medicaid, and terrified of losing these.
As a result, they don't try to get jobs, or advance themselves, socially. They don't take risks. Their therapists tend to encourage this stance.
I can't, with sincerity, say that they are all wrong, but I'll bet some of them are. If they pushed themselves, they could probably break free of their chains. But some of the others, would just break. I am not qualified to know which is which. I do my best to support them, and keep my opinions to myself. One thing I know for sure: I have no idea what other people can take, in their edges. Just because I can do something, doesn't mean that someone else can.
We advance, by pushing into our discomfort zone. There's a saying: "Winners do what they need to do. Losers do what they want to do."
> know of some folks that are dealing with mental health challenges. They are all dirt poor, on SSI/Medicaid, and terrified of losing these.
That's why we need UBI, SSI ends up being an indirect UBI anyway but at least with a real UBI system people wouldn't be afraid to try to work during the time periods they were feeling better.
The fact that people receiving medical or economic assistance often face irreversible cutoffs and net reductions in resources if they try helping themselves is so perverse.
I have seen people in this situation. Sometimes you don't even need to be poor, just in a bad situation where you need help and are getting it. But deeply incentivized (captured might be the right word) by artificial risk structures to avoid any attempts to get out.
Edges are cool. But they do have a dark side, often forgotten when talked about in public.
I have once been on the edge of chaos for too long and eventually when it flipped over it took years to recover. Possibly even decades. Or possibly a lifetime.
Agreed. Crunch times at work, 10+ hour days for years left me burnt out even after being out of that for 5 years. Too much edge of your comfort zone can ruin your life!
> I know of some folks that are dealing with mental health challenges. They are all dirt poor, on SSI/Medicaid, and terrified of losing these.
>
> As a result, they don't try to get jobs, or advance themselves, socially. They don't take risks. Their therapists tend to encourage this stance.
>
> I can't, with sincerity, say that they are all wrong, but I'll bet some of them are. If they pushed themselves, they could probably break free of their chains. But some of the others, would just break. I am not qualified to know which is which. I do my best to support them, and keep my opinions to myself.
I am one of those people. I tried. It was a bad idea.
I am neurodivergent with mental health issues and started working again in 2022 as a developer after having been on disability for about 15 years. A friend of mine has given me a referral to a place he worked, and I had a mid-level development position at a startup that involved a lot of teaching bootcamp grads how to do stuff - that part of my work especially was a great fit. Then the economy tightened up and I got laid off - and there was just no work to be found.
I had worked exactly 11 days past the trial work grace period (thanks, former employer), so I'm in a weird situation where I'm able to draw benefits for a couple of years but I'll have to reapply for disability in a few months. Had I worked 11 days less, I'd still have benefits like nothing had ever happened - and had I worked into December of that year I'd have nothing at all.
The part no one tells you about any of this is that you are going to be reliant on referrals for work for the rest of your life because the gap in your work history makes you absolutely toxic to any sort of HR department permanently. And if the job market dries up like it has, where you're just another mid-level dev in a sea of thousands, that gap in your work history is going to render you absolutely unemployable. I have no idea what that gap in my work history has to do with my skill as a software engineer (aside from the fact that I have had lots of time to practice), but it makes me radioactive.
My life is currently hinging on whether or not my reapplication goes through. If it doesn't... I really don't know what I'm going to do. Getting a job in my field is clearly not an option anymore, and there isn't much other work I'm really all that able to do.
All I can do to get through my days is to try very hard not to think about that. It's grim and it sucks and I really don't anticipate this ending well for me, but I'm trying to stay hopeful.
> “You have to listen to your gut. If something feels off, you’ve gotta listen to what your body is telling you and get out. If you don’t, you’ll end up regretting it.”
> Next time you’re feeling some discomfort in a situation, slow down and take a deep breath.
Check in with yourself. Where is your edge? What level of discomfort feels challenging but not overwhelming right now? Can you lean in and try something difficult? Or have you already leaned in too far and need to back off a little? Act accordingly. As the situation progresses, keep checking in with yourself.
So the difference seems to be the notion that "a little discomfort is okay". You still need to place your tolerable discomfort cut-off point somewhere, right before it feels overwhelming.
I kind of agree with the general content of the post, but find it somewhat simplistic with a focus on oneself. I see conversation more like a dance, a delicate balance where you should be aware of your own feelings, but also other people's. Some people feel comfortable over-sharing with someone they barely met, which can create quite intense discomfort. My understanding is that this tends to be more likely in people who struggle setting boundaries in their relationships. I'd assume some neurodivergent people would struggle with this as well, as they might find it challenging to sense this balance.
> I'd assume some neurodivergent people would struggle with this as well, as they might find it challenging to sense this balance.
Yeah, this is useless because it relies on the assumption that people’s level of comfort/discomfort is a rational thing that’s consistent among different people. It treats that complex barely-understood neurological system like it’s a barometer outside your window.
I’ve been dealing with an anxiety disorder for much of my life (and it’s not rare!), and I’ve explicitly had to learn NOT to trust my gut. My gut can randomly tell me I’m in mortal danger as I’m shopping for groceries or answering an email. I’m not listening to that thing.
It's also no small feat to ignore your senses like that. I feel that any small thought can become a storm at any moment and hijack my well being into another reality. It's crippling and very tiring. No kidding you had to "learn".
agree, and a caveat to all 'trust your gut' type advice should be that you need to first deal with any psychological issues before you can even perceive your own genuine intuition. in my experience anxiety in fact stems from being out of touch with intuition, and it takes a more complex process to re-learn how to be natural than any pithy advice can describe.
For me the difficulty is very often that my gut says I can share almost anything with anybody. Especially when in case of one on one conversations. So my conscious brain needs to put regularly a break on it. If I give in too much, I usually get a silent reaction and sometimes even people avoiding my conversation.
Indeed the 'conversation is like a dance' feels like a more correct expression of reality.
I think it's hard to judge discomfort while you're in the situation. It's usually in the retrospect when you realise "it wasn't that bad" and you actually gained more than you expected at the time.
Yeah, I've gone from a place of not being able to judge my level of discomfort at all, to only being able to realize it hours after the fact, to eventually learning to notice it in the moment (after a lot of practice). I still don't do it perfectly, but it's a skill that I've found very valuable.
A related concept from psychology/education is “the zone of proximal development.” It extends this “edge” concept to consider how much further you can push with support from a coach.
“It represents tasks beyond the learner’s current abilities but is attainable with the help and guidance of the more knowledgeable other (MKO). The ZPD is the range of tasks a person can’t complete independently but can accomplish with support.”
Vygotsky‘s ZPD is a useful 1-dimensional tool (literally a number line) for learning I find (to oversimplify) Csiksgentmihalyi‘z to be a better 2-D tool for conceptualizing performance in a task.
While both are pretty foundational concepts in motivational psychology it follows one can expand to create one’s own n-dimensional personal heuristics incorporating emotional and social factors.
“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
I dislike the example of sharing personal information in the article. It's sometimes not only about your own comfort and boundaries, but also how much you want to put on another person.
I struggle sometimes with that, probably because I don't understand the 'put on another person' part. Would you (or anyone else reading this) care to give a recognizable example?
The "weight on one's 'shoulders'/'chest'" is a figure of speech from the psychosomatical relief one may feel when sharing troubles.
Inversely, the "burden" to respond, whether gravitas is implied or not, can be socially-exhausting to some, and not even conjured by others.
People with low self-esteem or self-worth / depressed / self-described "burdensome" people often assume the pity they may solicit costs the other party part of their own emotional well-being - they've burdened them further with expectations of a response or acknowledgement.
Readit News
The theory proposes that all complex adaptive systems (CAS) naturally adapt to a state at the “edge of chaos” which is a transition zone between order(stability) and disorder.
The theory proposes this is the zone where maximal learning/innovation/creativity in social systems occur.
We studied complex adaptive systems in 2019, at the time I changed my LinkedIn tag line to : “learning at the edge of chaos” , still have not changed it since then.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos
this applies to all systems, from biospheres to food-chains to cells to human evolution.
resiliency is needed for systems to be less fragile against chaotic perturbations, as the most 'complex' (sub) systems are the most impacted by any change without it.
complex systems would fail catastrophically instantly if its resilient sub-systems weren't able to postpone it.
resiliency is the ability to respond to varied input, to face dis-order.
The universe, uncaring, is a dis-orderly increase in entropy. It accumulates, and averages to eventually to act as a sieve, a selective pressure, an edge....a particularly varied input.
Anything that would pressure the system - such as an environment change or competition against itself for a resource constraint - and this selective pressure culls the weakest variations of the system from the pool. Those variations that had the least effective resiliency features, now gone, are quickly replaced, and the system continues to exist.
All complex systems in adversarial conditions must then incentivize resiliency, and the generalized property of being self-reliant; adaptive to variation in input.
This incentive/reward is essentially an iota of agency, a flash of an of objective goal.
intelligence is the ability to reach a goal given varied input states.
The ability to 'learn' is really just how to compile ways to reach a goal, inferring relations between the solutions, then internalizing that inference to later better increase its ability to generalize / respond to varying input.
learning is _only_ possible at the edge of chaos
Which is what makes math so interesting. The constant stream of finding predictable islands in the unpredictable, and then unpredictable islands (hard problems) in the predictable (seemingly simple easily defined systems).
Math is chaos.
I suppose as we get smarter, and our understanding of the world gets more sophisticated, our survival/growth progress becomes more and more a math exercise.
I’m no psychologist but I find the existence of chaos and order in the physical word to be really interesting. It seems like something we would make up as a species, but really there is proof for it in the universe around us.
https://youtu.be/vwLb3XlPCB4
But sometimes, we shouldn't have action.
As I have gotten older, I have learned that "It Depends" is really a mantra for life.
I know of some folks that are dealing with mental health challenges. They are all dirt poor, on SSI/Medicaid, and terrified of losing these.
As a result, they don't try to get jobs, or advance themselves, socially. They don't take risks. Their therapists tend to encourage this stance.
I can't, with sincerity, say that they are all wrong, but I'll bet some of them are. If they pushed themselves, they could probably break free of their chains. But some of the others, would just break. I am not qualified to know which is which. I do my best to support them, and keep my opinions to myself. One thing I know for sure: I have no idea what other people can take, in their edges. Just because I can do something, doesn't mean that someone else can.
We advance, by pushing into our discomfort zone. There's a saying: "Winners do what they need to do. Losers do what they want to do."
I don't know how to do almost every project I take on. It can be terrifying. I write about that, here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
That's why we need UBI, SSI ends up being an indirect UBI anyway but at least with a real UBI system people wouldn't be afraid to try to work during the time periods they were feeling better.
I have seen people in this situation. Sometimes you don't even need to be poor, just in a bad situation where you need help and are getting it. But deeply incentivized (captured might be the right word) by artificial risk structures to avoid any attempts to get out.
I have once been on the edge of chaos for too long and eventually when it flipped over it took years to recover. Possibly even decades. Or possibly a lifetime.
I am one of those people. I tried. It was a bad idea.
I am neurodivergent with mental health issues and started working again in 2022 as a developer after having been on disability for about 15 years. A friend of mine has given me a referral to a place he worked, and I had a mid-level development position at a startup that involved a lot of teaching bootcamp grads how to do stuff - that part of my work especially was a great fit. Then the economy tightened up and I got laid off - and there was just no work to be found.
I had worked exactly 11 days past the trial work grace period (thanks, former employer), so I'm in a weird situation where I'm able to draw benefits for a couple of years but I'll have to reapply for disability in a few months. Had I worked 11 days less, I'd still have benefits like nothing had ever happened - and had I worked into December of that year I'd have nothing at all.
The part no one tells you about any of this is that you are going to be reliant on referrals for work for the rest of your life because the gap in your work history makes you absolutely toxic to any sort of HR department permanently. And if the job market dries up like it has, where you're just another mid-level dev in a sea of thousands, that gap in your work history is going to render you absolutely unemployable. I have no idea what that gap in my work history has to do with my skill as a software engineer (aside from the fact that I have had lots of time to practice), but it makes me radioactive.
My life is currently hinging on whether or not my reapplication goes through. If it doesn't... I really don't know what I'm going to do. Getting a job in my field is clearly not an option anymore, and there isn't much other work I'm really all that able to do.
All I can do to get through my days is to try very hard not to think about that. It's grim and it sucks and I really don't anticipate this ending well for me, but I'm trying to stay hopeful.
Sadly, it is not an unusual story (for me). I have heard similar bureaucratic Catch-22 stories for years.
Basically, no one wants to acknowledge that people with mental health issues even exist (unless it's a family member, then "That's different...").
They get totally shafted. Criminals tend to get treated better.
What would such a winner "win" though, if as soon as you get to do anything you want that means you lose?
Second, it’s interesting that the takeaway from the saying is that we can never do what we want.
> Next time you’re feeling some discomfort in a situation, slow down and take a deep breath. Check in with yourself. Where is your edge? What level of discomfort feels challenging but not overwhelming right now? Can you lean in and try something difficult? Or have you already leaned in too far and need to back off a little? Act accordingly. As the situation progresses, keep checking in with yourself.
So the difference seems to be the notion that "a little discomfort is okay". You still need to place your tolerable discomfort cut-off point somewhere, right before it feels overwhelming.
I kind of agree with the general content of the post, but find it somewhat simplistic with a focus on oneself. I see conversation more like a dance, a delicate balance where you should be aware of your own feelings, but also other people's. Some people feel comfortable over-sharing with someone they barely met, which can create quite intense discomfort. My understanding is that this tends to be more likely in people who struggle setting boundaries in their relationships. I'd assume some neurodivergent people would struggle with this as well, as they might find it challenging to sense this balance.
Yeah, this is useless because it relies on the assumption that people’s level of comfort/discomfort is a rational thing that’s consistent among different people. It treats that complex barely-understood neurological system like it’s a barometer outside your window.
I’ve been dealing with an anxiety disorder for much of my life (and it’s not rare!), and I’ve explicitly had to learn NOT to trust my gut. My gut can randomly tell me I’m in mortal danger as I’m shopping for groceries or answering an email. I’m not listening to that thing.
Indeed the 'conversation is like a dance' feels like a more correct expression of reality.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/zone-of-proximal-developmen...
“It represents tasks beyond the learner’s current abilities but is attainable with the help and guidance of the more knowledgeable other (MKO). The ZPD is the range of tasks a person can’t complete independently but can accomplish with support.”
Vygotsky‘s ZPD is a useful 1-dimensional tool (literally a number line) for learning I find (to oversimplify) Csiksgentmihalyi‘z to be a better 2-D tool for conceptualizing performance in a task.
While both are pretty foundational concepts in motivational psychology it follows one can expand to create one’s own n-dimensional personal heuristics incorporating emotional and social factors.
[1] https://centerforstartservices.org/blog/2024/04/what-flow
“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
Inversely, the "burden" to respond, whether gravitas is implied or not, can be socially-exhausting to some, and not even conjured by others.
People with low self-esteem or self-worth / depressed / self-described "burdensome" people often assume the pity they may solicit costs the other party part of their own emotional well-being - they've burdened them further with expectations of a response or acknowledgement.