Some words I can’t remember until I’ve written them down. Enter fractals. It’s a useful word.
It’s the idea that what happens at one scale in nature tends to happen at larger and smaller scales all across the universe.
It’s the reason a microscopic neuron looks like a tree root, looks like a galaxy. A branch looks like a smaller version of a tree, and smaller branches look like even smaller trees. A leaf has veins that look just like an animal circulatory system. Somehow nature tends to have a preferred pattern and shape for certain functions, and you see that shape repeated all throughout.
And I think that it’s the reason that a lot of mammalian behavior is predictable. I’ll bet that the last time that you were frustrated with your job or school, you wanted to quit. Just walk away, it’s not worth it! That’s flight, from the fight or flight reflex. A Lemur would react the same exact way to a threat, and the primitive part of our brain doesn’t know the difference between a predator and a middle manager.
Personally, I can predict the pattern of a new project long before beginning it. It goes like this:
Excitement – wow, this is gonna change the world. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done! I can’t wait to do it, and I can’t wait to jump right in.
Grind – heh, this is a little more work than I realized.
Second wind – what ever happened to my Ocarina playing? I forgot I was learning that thing, let’s pick it up for ol’ times’ sake.
Abandonment – Ocarina gathers dust in a forgotten corner.
That’s an example of fractal behavioralism*, and it can be applied to projects and hobbies of any size or scope. It’s what helps make some human behavior predictable.
Fractals were in vogue around the 70’s and 80’s, but something changed culturally and they fell out of the public discourse. But it’s a useful lense to keep in the toolkit and put on and occasionally to look through.
This is the third post in a collection on First Principles.
*I totally made that term up.
What got you to start thinking about fractals? Interesting that we both independently arrived at fractalism. Or did we?