Good stuff. A positive look: an accumulation of small habits snowballing into major positive behavioral changes. Is it fair to say that all the "small habits", "tiny habits", "atomic habits", "I'm-just-waiting-for-the-publication-of pico habits" are a sum-threshold attack at the established behavioral patterns?
And for a sinister comedy view: Amelie Poulain's attack comes to mind.
Reminds me of an old story about developing a FEM flutter simulation code that went through ONERA, DLR, and a bunch of other institutions and programmers using different languages. There was a line with a desperate comment: "I don't know what this loop is for, but I tried removing it and everything falls apart."
So, it would potentially require some dichotomy of self. Within this definition the sum-threshold attack is closely tied to the agent launching it. What if by slightly changing the environment we reach a certain threshold that it becomes the agent pushing us to enact further changes? You rescue a dog, but the dog really rescues you.
Good post. Made me think, so thx!
Ps. The movie is silly but the scene I was referring to was Amelie slightly moving a toothbrush and other things in the victim’s apartment leading to a spectacular collapse of that person’s routine and their rampant paranoia.