Self-organizing criticality

Self-organizing criticality is a way of looking at how things change over time. It helps us understand how systems can change quickly and why they often seem to happen without anyone making them happen.
Imagine a line of toy blocks on the floor. All of the blocks are the same size and shape. If you push one block, it will bump into the block next to it and then that block will bump into the block after it, and so on. Pretty soon all of the blocks will be scattered all over the floor.
This is an example of self-organizing criticality. When all of the blocks were in a line, the system was in a quiet, stable state. But when you push one block, a tiny change made the whole system quickly change from a stable state to an unstable state.
This same idea can be applied to other systems, like the weather or the stock market. Sometimes tiny changes can lead to big, unpredictable results. Self-organizing criticality helps us understand why and how these changes happen.