Things that are complex—living organisms, ecosystems, national economies—have a diverse array of connected elements that interact frequently. Because of this density of linkages, complex systems fluctuate extremely and exhibit unpredictability. In the case of weather, a small disturbance in one place could trigger a series of responses that build into unexpected and severe outcomes in another place, because of the billions of tiny interactions that link the origin and the outcome. In an ecosystem, one slightly mutated virus may spread like wildfire, causing a huge population depletion that, in
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