Simultaneous conflicting control variables make behavior abruptly unpredictable

Evidence

Take aggressiveness as a state variable of a dog: it increases in direct proportion to the dog’s anger, a control variable. Supposing the dog’s anger is measurable, when it reaches a certain threshold it is expressed in the form of an attack. Fear, the second control variable, has the opposite effect; when it reaches its threshold it is expressed as flight. In the absence of anger or fear, the dog’s behavior is stable (the top of Gauss’s curve). But if the two control variables increase together, the two thresholds will be approached simultaneously: the dog’s behavior becomes unpredictable and can switch abruptly from attack to flight, and vice versa. The system is said to be unstable: the control variables are continuous, but the state variables are discontinuous. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 418

Categorization

• DEFINE: The concrete worked example of catastrophe theory — continuous causes producing discontinuous jumps — grounding Lyotard’s claim that instability is the rule.
• XREF: The dog attack/flight catastrophe model is a vivid illustration of the Double Bind I connect to the Palo Alto schizophrenia research Lyotard cites next. — connects to: Factored problem-solving fails when threats combine multiplicatively — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2588

Broader Connections

• Factored problem-solving fails when threats combine multiplicatively #expands (0.82) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2588