+1. The multiple feedback loops have to be competing in some important sense; it’s just not true that “whenever there’s a dynamical system containing multiple instabilities (i.e. positive feedback loops) … there should be a canonical way to interpret that system as multiple competing subsystems...”
In the OP’s case study, the molecules are competing for scarce resources. More abstractly, perhaps we can say that there are multiple feedback loops such that when the system has travelled far enough in the direction pushed by one feedback loop, it destroys or otherwise seriously inhibits movement in the directions pushed by the other feedback loops.
Consider a pencil balanced on its point. It has multiple positive feedback loops, (different directions to fall in) and falling far in one direction prevents falling in others. But once it has fallen, it just sits there. That said, evolution can settle into a strong local minimum, and just sit there.
+1. The multiple feedback loops have to be competing in some important sense; it’s just not true that “whenever there’s a dynamical system containing multiple instabilities (i.e. positive feedback loops) … there should be a canonical way to interpret that system as multiple competing subsystems...”
In the OP’s case study, the molecules are competing for scarce resources. More abstractly, perhaps we can say that there are multiple feedback loops such that when the system has travelled far enough in the direction pushed by one feedback loop, it destroys or otherwise seriously inhibits movement in the directions pushed by the other feedback loops.
Consider a pencil balanced on its point. It has multiple positive feedback loops, (different directions to fall in) and falling far in one direction prevents falling in others. But once it has fallen, it just sits there. That said, evolution can settle into a strong local minimum, and just sit there.
Mmm, good point. My hasty generalization was perhaps too hasty. Perhaps we need some sort of robust-to-different-initial-conditions sort of criterion.