Term:shit show
A shit show is any problem complexi.e. a set of 1 or more interconnected social problems in which the average human response to it will cause it to proliferate, i.e. be sustained or grow bigger.
Selfish behaviors vs good intentions
A shit show can be categorized by the type of human responses it relies on for proliferation.
- A selfish shit show is one that feeds off of self-interested behaviors.
- A good intentions shit show is one that feeds off of well-meaning but misguided attempts to solve the problem.
Selfish shit shows
- The 2020 toilet paper shortage[ wikipedia link ]
- Any tragedy of the commons[ wikipedia link ]
Good intentions shit shows
- War, in some cases. [ELABORATION needed]
- Economics, in some cases. [ELABORATION needed]
- Software projects that become more and more unnecessarily complex, leading to code bloat.
Shit show coefficient
- A problem complex with a shit show coefficient less than 1 is not a shit show. It is a manageable problem that gets easier the more people work on it.
- A problem complex with a shit show coefficient equal to or greater than 1 is a shit show.
The coefficient is defined as a ratio:
The magnitude of the problem complex before such responses
To define a shit show coefficient, one must first define a metric of magnitude of the problem complex, as well as defining an iteration (i.e. a round of human responses to the problem complex). TODO: Add to this section: Some examples of how these could be defined for specific problem complexes.
The shit show coefficient is analogous to:
- R0 (virology)
- k factor (neutron multiplication factor) (nuclear reactor physics)
- In the study of forest fires, a similar coefficient could be defined (if a tree were to catch on fire, how many trees would it set on fire on average). Dry dense forests would have a coefficient greater than 1, and a whole forest fire could easily start from just a simple campfire or lightning strike.
A shit show can be understood as being similar to a virus that spreads via people's instinctive responses to it. It could also be classified as a meme[ wikipedia link ] (in the scientific sense, not an internet meme necessarily).
In systems theory
If society for some reason tends towards a shit show coefficient of 1, it could be considered a complex system that undergoes self-organized criticality[ wikipedia link ], and shit shows would exist on all scales (i.e. a statistical power-law distribution of sizes). There's probably some empirical evidence for this, but the real question is what we should do about it. [RESEARCH needed]
Converting shit shows into manageable problems
This section has not been filled in yet.