15 Minutes of Hubris

Hubris, as in the book Imperial Hubris, actually does not mean arrogance.
Hubris is Greek and is recently imported from Philology and Classics into common use. Thus we still use the "u" instead of changing it to "y", as in "dynamic" from the Greek stem "dun-" . Thus, "dynamic" was a wprd borrowed from Greek long enough ago to have undergone that "u" to "y" change.

Hubris is a reversal of fortune attributed to Fate or Moira.
The higher the flight, the more precipitous the fall.

Oedipus experienced hubris. It was through no volition of his, no intentional sin. The mere fact of success prepares for its own demise: hubris.
Hubris works a lot faster nowadays. If Andy Warhol were alive, he would say that we all will have our 15 minutes of hubris. Only sometimes it lasts longer than 15 minutes. And sometimes we weren't flying high in the first place. No. Hubris is like the end of the dinosaurs: it just was time for them to go.

A lot of the history of Life is similar to a Wolfram Process to which various Darwinian Algorithms may be applied. But what is evident in certain Wolfram Processes (cellular automata applied to evolutionary processes) is that sometimes it is just written, it is fated, it is the next step of working out the underlying code.
Scientists look for the end of the dinosaurs in a comet impact, climate change, changes in predator-prey relationships. There is no smoking gun, however. It was just time. Sometimes things just happen. Period. Look at some of Wolfram’s Cellular Automata. Look at the ones that are chaotic and create areas of order which endure and endure, then they abruptly end. Whether a step in his cellular automata represent a second, a day, or a thousand years, when the code plays out, it’s a wrap.

Our end is already written.It is noble to redact the writing with acts of as much honor and godliness as possible.

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