Why do Power Laws Work so Widely? | Episode 2207 | Closer To Truth

One of the main reason that powerlaws are not so ubiquitous is that so many scientists are still obsessed with measurement with Gaussian distribution blinding them to the real data. For example it is only recently been noted in the last few years that sea waves mostly follow power laws after decades (and indeed centuries) of measuring them through guassian statistics. If something so obvious as sea waves has been miscalculated then there are many other things we are simply using the wrong stats for. The irony is that if you ask any seasoned sailor and they will tell you about rogue extra large waves that they have seen.

Would love a whole series on related universal laws

The first guy in first segment explained things so simply and eloquently. I plan to buy his book.

Oh wow. Thank you for doing an episode on complex systems. I feel this topic is underrated,... you often see stuff about mathematics, quantum physics, etcetera in "reality-investigating" videos and podcasts. But the complex systems approach is fascinating and gets overlooked for some reason.

One thing to note here is the difference between power law (more general) and power law distribution. Power law is any relationship x and y, where when plotting log(x) by log(y) gives you straight line approximation. Power law distributions are the special case where x is some outcome variable (e.g organism size) and y is a frequency or density (frequency summing up to 1) in some population of outcome variables and importantly* where you get a straight line approx. as well. Just to share because people saying "80/20 rule for wealth" are talking about power law distribution whereas West describing organisms is talking about power law more generally.

This man, in this name or in another, physicist or biologist, or mathematician, or what? I love to hear him all the time, endlessly. I wish I had access to his publications, from A to Z, that he is leaving behind.

Bitcoin price and utilisation follows the same Cube logarithmic (log-log) rules - facinating !!! Growth of self-organising networks..

Excellent series.

Thank you Robert

I love how in the last image, we have the log cabin scaffolding in the foreground, with its many straight ‘linearly sloped lines and Dr. Kuhn exploring in its background.