ABSTRACT
Houses are normally safe, stable, and predictable. Increasing interdependencies necessarily increase the problems of prediction by increasing the complexity of the dynamic process. Differences in time-scales are essential to the understanding and predictability of inherently complex dynamic systems. Differences in speeds of change are inherent in the mixing of different physical processes. The physical depreciation of the house is sliding on a qualitatively different time scale, quite undisturbed by such fast irregularities of the inhabitants. With many inhabitants, the house would be inherently chaotic. It would be deterministic, bounded, and yet unpredictable. Chaos and unpredictability do not breed feelings of safety and reliability. Rather, social and economic frictions are giving rise to slow and sufficiently collective variables, characterizing the dynamics of the social system. Frictions are important determinants of structural stability and order, and could therefore be seen as an enemy of creativity.
