I wanted to relate the result to well known phenomena in Dynamical systems. The value of the comment is in that relationship. But I guess I can try.

After a saddle-node bifurcation (for example) a system is left with a region of critical slowing down. It can be thought of as the ghost of the fix point that used to exist in that region. Thus observing local phenomena in the system can make it look like the system is still stable while in reality it isn't.

I guess the most famous example of this is global warning. As our emissions of greenhouse gases increased during the industrial revolution, the environment still seemed stable. But in reality we had already deleted the stable point around with our planets temperature oscillated.

Where is the slowing down? What causes it?

I can see there a compounding drift from the stable point that is not initially apparent because the compounding values have not yet grown sufficiently to be meaningful. It is still an increase in drift

Slowing down implies a decrease though, what does that represent then?

I think we see the slowing down primarily in hiring right?

Is your point that earth is not at a "stable point" or "stable range" but it used to be?

Or are you talking about another system like "society" or "civilization"? Or something else altogether?

Society, education and white-collar work in this case. Not saying I believe this does mean the collapse of white-collar work of course. Moreso that if that was the case, the point of no return could have already been passed without us knowing.

For something as abstract as education, is there such a thing as a "point of no return"? It's not obvious to me that's something that degrades in the same way that climate or a physical system does, even if we can draw some parallels. I do think it's still a useful analogy, for example, it would imply that even though we're only starting to notice the ripples of that instability now, it has the implication that fixing it things would mean having to address much more than just what's apparent, we'd also have to fix everything that lead to this mess over the last few decades.

I think there is for a snapshot in time of education or work which is how we commonly think of work right? It isn't true of course. But we sort try to group work into periods of stability between revolutions, industrial, digital or whatever.

We have a chance to adapt, that's for sure. But white-collar work might not exist (or just resemble) as it does today.

But I agree, the category is almost too malleable to analyze.

Everything is a wave and there are always oscillations.

“ a system can deteriorate slowly even after something fundamental has changed.”: https://chatgpt.com/share/6ab7e7ca-7d54-83ed-931b-55300fa1f4...

So really it is not saying much at all.

A bifurcation is a non-continuous change to a system as a result of a continuous parameter changing.

For example the disappearance of a stable temperature of the earth due to a continuous increase in green house emissions.

In this case the change in test scores is continuous yet might still lead to the disappearance of a stable point in society like white-collar work. At the start the change might seems slow but the point of no return could have already been passed.

I'm not saying I necessarily believe that (or that I stated it with much clarity) but I thought it was interesting how it "rhymes" with dynamical system theory.

Something changed and adjusting is slow

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The good news is the ocean is vast. You don't need to be on a Titanic.

Shit is about to hit the fan.