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   John Carlos Baez (johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 07-May-2026 03:09:56 JST John Carlos Baez

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   Leverage exploits "tipping points": critical points beyond which a significant and often unstoppable change takes place. There is already extensive work on how our interventions in the biosphere may trigger unwanted tipping points, and how to spot these before they happen, for example through the slowing of the return to equilibrium after perturbations [Sc]. We have learned much about tipping points through observations of the natural world. But now researchers are starting to apply these lessons to “positive tipping points”: ways in which social and biological systems can fall into better states [Ot,Ta]. Farmer and others have called for more research on these [Fa], and it will be important to integrate them into the theory of system dynamics.

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   [Sc] Scheffer, M. (2009). Critical Transitions in Nature and Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

   [Ot] Otto, I. M., et al. (2020). Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050. PNAS 117(5), 2354-2365. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900577117

   [Ta] Tàbara, J. D., et al. (2018). Positive tipping points in a rapidly warming world. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 31, 120-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.01.012

   [Fa] Farmer, J.D., et al. (2019). Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition. Science 364(6436), 132-134. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw7287