Simplicable Guide

23 Examples of Temporary Change

John Spacey, December 03, 2021

A temporary change is a change that reverts back to its original state. This is a common occurrence that has several interesting variations:

Irresistible Forces

Resisting a force without enough sustained energy to resist forever.

Change	Return
Jump in the air	Fall to earth
Freeze an ice cube	Warms to room temperature
Boil water	Cools to room temperature
Clothes become wet	Clothes dry in the air
Stretch an elastic	Returns to original shape

Return to Equilibrium

Equilibrium is the point where competing forces are balanced. Changes that put a system out of equilibrium are likely to be temporary. For example, supply and demand in a market where a sudden spike in demand for a good causes shortages. This change would tend to be temporary as suppliers have incentive to increase supply to meet demand.

Change	Return
Shortage	Suppliers increase supply to meet demand
Surplus	Suppliers decrease supply to clear the surplus
Get dizzy or off balance	Recover your balance
Get a cold	Heal

Deviation From Trend

A process that is strongly running in one direction that temporarily goes in the other direction. For example, the stock of a mismanaged company that is destined to go bankrupt may temporarily go up for a period of time with a long term trend that will drive the stock to zero.

Long Term Trend	Deviation
Climate change	Weather variations
Stock market will be much higher in future	Stock market goes down
Company will eventually go bankrupt	Company stock goes up
Air pollution getting worse in a city	Fresh air from a pleasant wind

Regression Toward the Mean

Regression toward the mean is the tendency for unusual results to become closer to average with time.

Change	Revision to Mean
Have a bad day	Things get better with time.
Have a good day	Bad days also arrive with time.
Investor dramatically outperforms market	Investors that outperform the market may be lucky or be taking large risks such that their results will be more average in the long term.

Stable Systems

Systems such as a society, machine or organism often have stability built into them. For example, if you are hot your body may sweat to bring down your core temperature.

Change	Return
Overflowing river system	River system eventually drains
Human gets a headache	The body typically tries to return to normal
A society has an economic recession	Policy makers decrease interest rates and flush banks with liquidity to try to stimulate economic activity.
A room becomes cold	An automated heating, cooling and ventilation system begins to heat the room.

Human Behavior

Human's commonly seek stability and may work to try to undo changes that occur.

Change	Human Action
Fall down	Get up
Bicycle breaks down	Fix bicycle
Fired from job	Get a new job

Ultimate Fate

Ultimate fate is the way that something will end. From a philosophical point of view, it could be argued that many or most changes are temporary. For example, the Big Crunch theory of the ultimate fate of the universe suggests that the universe will eventually return to a state similar to the start of the Big Bang. If this is true, any change that has ever happened will ultimately be temporary.