Anyway, this doesn't really impact the article, which just uses the trees of MA as a framing device (narrative framing, that is, rather than for example house framing). I just thought it was a neat bit of trivia.
"A model is the Marie Kondo version of nature—relentlessly decluttered and tidied up. Sometime important parts get tossed out ... Would we learn more if all those aspects of life in the woods had a place in the equations or the algorithms?"
I often design very large planting schemes and there are some genuinely useful approaches to randomness explored here.
And he's written 'Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations' which I'll be tracking down asap.
Niche assembly: every survival must have its own unique edge of advantage. I guess I'm most convinced by this. The counter-argument is "how can every specie has its unique edge?", but it could also be that we have not yet discovered it.
Natural drift: if everyone is equally fit and the system is large enough, then they can all survive (for a long time). But how come is everyone equally fit? The response is "since everyone survived (as we observe), everyone must be equally fit".. Honestly I'm not convinced by this logic.
Social distancing: trees practice social distancing to defend enemies, so diversity comes in. If tree-killing pests are all staying on one tree and kill its offsprings around it (but cannot kill the original tree since it's too large), then this theory seems plausible. I have no idea if this is true in the forests though..
People don't get that evolution selects for one thing only: continuation of your branch of the process. No other measuring stick. Genes, cells, multicells etc. just exist and some are better at continuing to exist, and they do that by finding niches for themselves. Once everyone found one, they are all equally fit. But we still have cultural narratives of humans at the "pinnacle of evolution" as if there is a big (abrahamic...) judge in the sky ranking species linearly. So we struggle really appreciating the trippy "goal" of evolution