Post 200: Cancer & Natural Disaster Dynamics

Note: This marks my 200th post, according to my Blogger archives, of attempting interdisciplinary inquiries into the human condition via essays.

Above: A picture from Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe in California; quite a scene for late May! Note the eye-pleasing aesthetics of this fractal landscape.

Cancers, like avalanches, can be devastating.

Both are events that we'd like to prevent from causing catastrophe.

Cancer is a single cell gone haywire. An avalanche is a single snowball gone awry.

And nothing acts independently; interdependent communities (see The Daily G) tie these single entities to the fates of those in their proximities.

Cancer is a single cell that has manipulated its nearest neighbors into dividing uncontrollably. In time, this cancerous cell and its deceived 'followers' reach a critical mass, forming a tumor. For awhile, cancerous tumors remain isolated (Stages I-III), and extraction of this dangerous region of body tissue is still possible (say with robotic surgery): Physicians can still, "remove the tumor," as Nassim Taleb likes to say (hat tip to Dave Lull). However, cancer tumor mathematics behave like avalanches do: that is, explosive pressure builds up rather silently for awhile and then, all of the sudden, cascading effects spread nonlinearly and unpredictably with the force and fervor of a hurricane. This type of systemic rupture--a blow up--is known as metastasis in the context of cancer dynamics. As cells from the original tumor migrate throughout the body--like the snowballing that marks avalanche unfolding--other organ systems feel the effects: these shock waves, which initially only influenced a localized region, now begin degrading global physiological functioning (the entire mountainside starts crumbling). In a fractal manner, the 'one-cell-deceiving-neighboring-cells-to-produce-a-tumor' process repeats itself, throwing kindling on the burning fire. As this miscommunication problem expands like a forest fire, patients experience the signs and symptoms that we call Stage IV Cancer. At this point, the medical treatment approaches resemble those of fire fighters attempting to contain large-scale epidemics in the hills: chemotherapy is like direct attack, for instance.

And, the best way to counter a forest fire is to recognize and extinguish it during its early stages. The same applies to cancer (and to avalanches). Once the flood gates open, the limits of being human curb our intervention abilities. That doesn't mean we don't try our best to contain and treat the problem--we do--but when it's all said and done, we realize that the mathematics of these natural disaster phenomena suggest we'd be wise to expend resources up-front (prevention and detection) to nip these problems in the bud before they ever gain any sizeable momentum to start snowballing, cascading, spreading, and metastasizing (often, uncontrollably, unfortunately).

It's fascinating to then extend these links to economies, especially in light of the notion that economies are just fractal manifestations of physiologies, produced by simplicity embedded within simplicity, creating extensive complexity along the way. If economic bankruptcy for society is like a cancerous human body, and if cancer mathematics resemble those of avalanches and forest fires (and earthquakes, etc.), and if we suspect that the misbehavior of markets follows rough Mandelbrotian randomness and fractal flickering (Pareto / Zipf / Le'vy / Taleb et al. power-laws; though, Mother Nature tends to obey gravity, while digitally-driven extremistan markets face virtually no real physical ceiling), then hybridizing oncology with other disciplines seems like a decent idea to me. For starters, we could look at how detection and prevention of catastrophes are understood, studied, and practiced in these different fields.

Notably, in the field, avalanche prevention relies on two premises:

1. "Forests and trees are a good line of defense because they hold back snow like a giant fence."

2. "Another good way to prevent avalanches is to break up heavy masses of snow."

The net result:

"As long as these methods are followed, many avalanches can be prevented each year. Of course, it is always important to know that none of nature’s disasters can be wholly prevented. Therefore, it is best to be prepared for what may someday come."

From these notes on avalanche mitigation, we could deduce a few conclusions about economic reasoning. Namely, economics and its associated mathematical modeling tend to push people to discard of redundancy. At the margin, profit maximization in the short-term, for instance, nudges firms to remove or change the use of any resources that don't drive the bottom-line toward the green right away. This stands in stark contrast to Nassim Taleb's Black Swan recommendations for how to be robust: (1) reduce leverage, (2) be over-insured, (3) avoid clustering, and (4) be resistant to shocks. Based on some forms of economic reasoning, trees that currently prevent avalanches would suddenly appear to be nuisances to resort owners: "Cut them away; their blocking our ski runs," they may say--that is, until that day, when the system-sans-reinforcing-and-redundant-scaffolding-nodes crashes to the ground, knocking out the recently built ski lifts, costing the company an unanticipated fortune that its insurance policy fails to cover properly. Similarly, in economies, when firms get 'too big to fail', the risk of blow-ups surfaces rapidly. Breaking up large chunks of snow is like enforcing anti-trust policy, as one possibility. Of course, deciding when to intervene is not easy: just exactly when did that clump of snow get too big for its local environment to handle anyways? But the connections are there, regardless. When gigantic firms go bankrupt, the resulting shockwaves effect the entire economy, as we've seen recently with the banking industry collapsing. Likewise, when large tumors start metastasizing (physiological bankruptcy), the entire body starts malfunctioning. In medicine, I see room for translating lessons learned from handling disasters in nature to caring for patients in emergency rooms, clinics, hospitals, and elsewhere (with a kindred spirit to the integrative work that Didier Sornette at UCLA likes to do).

Finally, this reflection reveals the importance of a related issue: accurate detection and preventive intervention. Much of what self-experimentation supplies is linked to tools for increasing self-awareness. In a way, self-experimentation (blending the Qualitative and Quantitative Self) is an execution framework for becoming more aware of ourselves and our multidirectional interactions with our immediate surroundings. For example, in his recently published paper, "The unreasonable effectiveness of my self-experimentation," Seth Roberts discusses how artisanal and hobbyist (stochastic) tinkering reflects human nature, and self-experimentation captures and applies these dynamics effectively. Whether working to prevent headaches, avalanches, or cancers, people must have ways to detect information signaling correctly; that's the foundation of Meta-Rule formation as a method for mapmaking.

And, when I work on cartography, I attempt to be hyper-optimistic in concert with being some type of skeptic; I do my best to see potential and seek promising opportunities while simultaneously working to hedge against instability, against avalanche-like catastrophe.

I want to prevent cancer disasters fervently, but I also want to detect serendipity perceptively. Yet, the Paradox of Living (searching versus acting) makes another appearance when we realize that preventing and curing cancer are really the same thing fundamentally.

What does that mean? Easy: self-similarity.

To good health,

Brent