But, once again, it’s hard to say what the missing piece could possibly be.
This statement took me a long time to untangle.
The Central African Republic is located in the poorest, most war-torn region of the globe. Switzerland is in the middle of the European Union. If the Central African Republic was transposed into the middle of Western Europe and assimilated into the European Union then it’d a prosperous country in no time. In this sense, it’s easy to say what the missing piece is.
But it’s not well-defined which parts Europe are essential to Switzerland’s continuous existence. That’s because “which parts Europe are essential to Switzerland’s continuous existence?” isn’t even a well-defined question. There are many different combinations of features of Europe you could remove to trigger Switzerland’s internal collapse.
I think that the original statement is intended to mean something along the following lines.
A self-perpetuating system includes its environment. Part of the self-perpetuating system is encoded in its environment. Exactly which bits of the self-perpetuating system are encoded in its environment is often not a well-defined question and therefore difficult to state.
This statement took me a long time to untangle.
The Central African Republic is located in the poorest, most war-torn region of the globe. Switzerland is in the middle of the European Union. If the Central African Republic was transposed into the middle of Western Europe and assimilated into the European Union then it’d a prosperous country in no time. In this sense, it’s easy to say what the missing piece is.
But it’s not well-defined which parts Europe are essential to Switzerland’s continuous existence. That’s because “which parts Europe are essential to Switzerland’s continuous existence?” isn’t even a well-defined question. There are many different combinations of features of Europe you could remove to trigger Switzerland’s internal collapse.
I think that the original statement is intended to mean something along the following lines.