Beinhocker's Origin of Wealth

Punctuated Equilibrium

Nature doesn't evolve smoothly -- it lurches. Long periods of calm are shattered by explosive bursts of innovation and extinction.

The same pattern shows up in technology (decades of incremental improvement, then the iPhone), in business (stable industries disrupted overnight), and in this simulation.

Watch an ecosystem of species (or technologies, or companies) evolve, and see how removing one "keystone" can trigger an avalanche.

Punctuated Equilibrium

Tick 0
Fitness 0
Density 0
Diversity 0
Keystones 0
Cascades 0

Simulation

Speed

20 ms

Preset Experiments

Parameters

0.05
1.0

Actions

Display



Legend

New
Growing
Established
Keystone
Mutualism
Competition

Key Insight

The network self-organizes through repeating phases: random → growth → organized → CRASH → random again. The innovations that trigger growth are impossible to predict, and the keystones that anchor the organized phase are both the system's greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability. This is why Schumpeter called capitalism "creative destruction."

Random

What's Happening

The ecosystem is initializing. Press Start to begin evolution.

Fitness Over Time

See the long flat periods? That's "stasis." Then -- bang -- a punctuation event reshuffles everything. This is Gould and Eldredge's "punctuated equilibrium."

Ecosystem Diversity

High diversity = many niches occupied. Watch it crash during extinction events, then slowly rebuild as new species fill the gaps.

Cascade Sizes

Each bar is an extinction cascade. Most are tiny, but occasionally a big one reshapes the whole ecosystem.

Cascade Distribution (log-log)

This log-log plot should form a straight line -- a power law. That means there's no "typical" extinction size. Most are tiny, but massive ones are always possible. Same pattern as earthquakes, stock market crashes, and forest fires.

Real-World Parallel

Waiting for the simulation to generate patterns...