4.3 Characteristic Precursors Of Bifurcations

In non-linear complex systems long term predictability in generally not possible because of the presence of deterministic chaos and stochastic noise. On the other hand, since bifurcations are associated with innovations it is an important task to anticipate when innovations are about to happen. This is consistent with the previous statement about unpredictability of chaotic systems since chaos only excludes long-term predictability but actually supports short-term predictability because of the deterministic nature of chaos. There are basically two distinct characteristic precursors to local bifurcations:

1. Critical Slowing Down: This means that all time-scales related to the approach to a stable state (minimum in the fitness landscape) are slowed down. For instance if any external event takes the system away from its stable state it will take increasingly longer to return to is stable state as the bifurcation point is approached.
2. Critical Fluctuations: Since the minimum in the fitness landscape becomes shallow small stochastic fluctuations will have an increasing effect on the system.

Both of these precursors can be used not only to recognize when innovations are imminent but also in which directions the innovations will lead