Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wnkrshm 1043 days ago
Starting small doesn't work if you have a nonlinear system. In nonlinear systems, the magnitude of a perturbance isn't linearly related to the absorbed effect.

So in the worst case: small input, giant irreversible effect.

1 comments

Control of nonlinear systems is common, in this case we’d be starting small by putting the system back to the state it was in when the sulfur were there. Additionally, removing an input can have an outsized effect as we saw here, so your philosophy seems to require a do nothing approach. Is that what you mean?

Of course that’s impossible to do since the world itself is doing things like erupting volcanos, shifting plates, melting glaciers, and redirecting ocean currents.