“It’s something like brain chemistry. If you consider the planet an organism, you’re at the mercy of its whims. Animals in stressful situations will act strategically to avoid threats—mostly we’re talking about predators, but also, say, floods and storms—until their strategies no longer work. At a certain tipping point, their brain floods with a stress hormone, and their behavior switches from strategic to random. It’s almost the same as the entropy argument. There’s too much energy, too much stress, and the city needs to shake it loose, like how boiling water happens when it’s too hot and
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