From: jimruttshow8596
The concept of scaling laws helps understand how various aspects of systems change with their size. This framework has been applied to both biological organisms and human settlements like cities, revealing distinct patterns that shape their development and challenges [02:11:15]. Key figures in this research include Jeffrey West and Luis Bettencourt [02:13:17].
Biological Scaling Laws
Biological systems exhibit a phenomenon known as sublinear scaling. This means that as an animal’s mass doubles, its metabolic rate does not double; instead, it increases by approximately 75% (a “three-quarters law”) [03:20:23] [03:23:25]. This principle applies across a vast range of biological systems, including different species, trees, animals, forests, and individual trees [02:46:58] [02:51:53].
The implications of this sublinear scaling are significant, fundamentally shaping how biology works in the world. It influences the size and speed of animals and structures food chains [03:46:51] [03:54:56]. For instance, an elephant is about 20 times less energetic per pound of meat than a mouse [04:07:08]. This rule is ubiquitous across all known biology and cannot be violated [04:19:23] [04:54:55]. While Jeffrey West and his colleagues did not discover this empirical law, they identified the theoretical reasons behind it [04:25:28] [04:31:33].
Some aspects of human systems, such as corporations, also show sublinear scaling. For example, adding more individuals to a large organization does not result in a linear increase in income or revenue; there is an asymptote [05:01:02].
City Scaling Laws
In stark contrast to biological systems, cities exhibit superlinear scaling [05:31:31]. This means that as the population of a city doubles, its GDP per capita, innovation, and other metrics like patents and musical creations increase by approximately 15% (1.15 scaling factor) [05:39:39] [05:53:57] [06:12:16]. Qualitatively, superlinear scaling causes the growth curve to get steeper and steeper, unlike sublinear scaling which bends the curve, slowing down growth [06:24:27]. This makes cities and biological systems diametrically opposite in their underlying mathematical dynamics [06:33:36].
Connectivity and Information Transfer
This superlinear scaling is hypothesized to be linked to increasing connectivity, analogous to Metcalfe’s Law [06:57:57] [07:02:04]. The core idea is that information transfer, or the “ephemeralization of pattern transmission, formation, and copying,” operates differently from energy transfer [08:17:19] [08:26:28]. For example, inventing calculus requires significant effort, but transmitting that pattern (information) is far less expensive [08:37:39]. This dynamic of information, an “anti-realist regime,” is believed to be the dominant force driving superlinear scaling in cities [09:05:07] [09:16:19].
Historically, mind-to-mind contact primarily required in-person interaction, making embodied collaboration the central driver of civilization and the city [09:29:29] [09:41:41] [15:16:06]. This led to “cosmopolitan urbanism” and even imperialism, as cities expanded to maximize the number of bodies in communication [09:57:57] [10:10:08]. The Roman Empire, for example, functioned as an extended body of the city of Rome, optimizing for population density [11:51:53].
Constraints and Solutions
The benefits of superlinear scaling incentivize cities to grow as large as possible [11:22:25]. However, this growth introduces problems like feeding, watering, waste management, and housing large populations [10:37:39]. Civilization’s progression can be seen as a series of solutions to these challenges, enabling further population growth and subsequent wealth and innovation [10:51:00].
Solutions to these constraints generally fall into three categories:
- Technologies of Density: Innovations that allow more people in the same space, like the elevator, which increased building height from four to fifteen stories [13:16:00].
- Technologies that Virtualize Space (Transportation): Advancements like trains and streetcars (around 1900-1910) allowed cities to expand physically while maintaining effective proximity by increasing travel velocity [13:34:00].
- Ephemeralization of Communication: Reducing the need for physical proximity for information transfer. Examples include messengers, writing, the printing press, telegram, telephone, and television [13:53:00].
The Digital Tipping Point
The digital realm represents a new stage of ephemeralization because, unlike previous analog media, it can produce all forms of media (video, audio, text) [15:37:38]. This universal substrate for communication suggests a tipping point where the quality of digital collaboration becomes sufficient to shift the center of human collaboration from embodied to purely virtual interactions [16:26:29].
The COVID-19 pandemic served as a “forcing function,” accelerating the adoption of virtual communication tools like video conferencing [16:53:55]. While not a complete replacement for all in-person collaboration, technologies like the Apple Vision represent significant advancements in virtualizing relationality [17:53:55] [18:04:05]. Demographic shifts, such as Gen Z’s different relationship with the virtual compared to older generations, also contribute to this ongoing transition [18:14:00]. This shift is anticipated to be as transformative as the move from indigenous living to civilization [18:40:00].
Negative Superlinear Scaling and Institutional Upgrades
While cities bring benefits, some negative aspects also scale superlinearly: madness, corruption, crime, and sickness [20:01:04] [20:18:00]. Historically, cities were “net killers” of people until about 1890 in the West due to their unhealthiness [20:21:00]. Dealing with these “bad superlinear scaling” problems requires radical shifts in institutional structure and capacity [21:11:00].
A prime example is the Victorian transition in London, which saw major institutional upgrades to address crime and disease. This included the invention of urban policing (professional, tax-funded police) and massive investments in public works like modern urban sewers [21:24:25]. These upgrades, involving technology, processes, training, and cultural artifacts, represented significant, risky, and often resisted changes that allowed cities to grow larger [23:20:00].
The early 21st century is reaching the limits of these existing institutional forms, evident in rising crime, widespread institutional corruption (degradation of social institution functionality), and public health crises [24:07:00]. This suggests a necessity for a major regime change [24:41:00]. The shift towards the virtual realm is seen as a potential solution to many of these problems, further fueling the transition to a new societal construct [24:58:00].
The Civium Construct
The “civium” is proposed as a new attractor where the center of gravity moves to the virtual realm [25:10:00]. This involves a massive decoupling of the body and mind, as virtual collaboration can involve far more minds than any physical city [25:22:00]. This migration of collaborative capacity to the virtual realm will diminish the attractiveness of traditional urban environments, as they retain the negative aspects of population density but lose the benefits [25:48:00].
Reclaiming Human Elements
This transition also “unlocks a new capacity to reestablish the human elements” that were sacrificed during the course of civilization [26:08:00]. Cities are seen as unhealthy for minds (increasing insanity, depression) and bodies, requiring cultural artifacts that subordinate human needs to the demands of scaling [26:21:00]. For example, oppressive policing in large cities contrasts with the community-based law enforcement in small towns where people know each other [26:38:00].
Modern, urbanized individuals may not fully grasp how much “meaningfulness” has been given up compared to life in natural environments with strong, caring communities [27:54:00]. The shift to civium involves a return to the meso scale—communities of 50 to 500 people where individuals are known, and mutual support for physical, social, and spiritual sustenance is high-dimensional and organic [28:51:00]. This contrasts with the anonymous and sterile relationships with the market and government in modern society [29:40:00].
The hypothesis is that there is significant demand for this return to the meso scale, which will require building new capacities in infrastructure, institutions, and basic humanness, as many of these capabilities have been lost [30:03:00].
Quality Over Quantity
The transition from civilization to civium maps to a shift from quantity to quality [30:36:00]. As tying corta puts it, it’s about “growing living things” rather than “scaling heaps” [30:42:00]. In the virtual realm, while Metcalfe’s Law measures the potential value of a network as exponential with the number of nodes, the actual value depends entirely on the quality of point-to-point connections [31:13:00].
This highlights the importance of attentional curation. Platforms optimized for revenue often lead to suboptimal attention allocation [32:37:00]. A civium, in contrast, would optimize the curation of attention for human well-being within planetary limits, leading to a “tremendous unlock” of quality [34:13:00].
Topological Characteristics of Civium
The civium has a simple topological structure:
- Downward (Physical): Humans increasingly migrate to human-scale, humane, embodied congregations, likely at Dunbar’s Number levels (e.g., 150 people) [34:43:00]. These communities would involve long-term embodiment in specific locations, fostering care for the place and adaptation to the environment [35:03:00]. This migration will involve a “recovery” of human capabilities and building new infrastructure and cultural artifacts [35:34:00]. The goal is to cultivate human beings who are “vastly more capable of humaning,” less emotionally volatile, better at dialogue, and possess deeper embodied wisdom [35:42:00].
- Upward (Virtual): Real attention is directed towards the quality dimension of the virtual [36:02:00]. This means changing algorithms to prioritize high-quality relationality, truth, and generative dialogue, rather than merely maximizing revenue [36:27:00]. When virtuous people are the inputs to networks designed for healthy interactions, it leads to a “tremendous unlock” of value that could potentially exceed all value produced in the last 50,000 years of civilization [37:24:00].
- Intermediary Layer (Relationship Between the Two): This layer involves developing “technology hygiene” to ensure healthy interactions between humans and the virtual realm [40:01:00]. It emphasizes avoiding harmful uses of technology, such as virtual overlays disrupting family life, and fostering cultural constructs that guide appropriate technological use [40:10:00]. When done correctly, the physical and virtual aspects are highly compatible, mutually reinforcing, and can lead to reciprocal openings without obvious limits [40:38:00]. Conversely, if technology dominates, it risks consuming the “seed corn of humanity,” leading to further declines in human well-being (e.g., rising SSRI prescriptions, declining fertility, increasing suicide rates, institutional corruption) [40:46:00].
The journey to civium requires simultaneously changing individuals and institutional structures, which is a significant challenge [42:21:00]. Without institutional support, maintaining personal changes (e.g., technology hygiene for children) becomes extremely difficult [43:41:00].