Self-Organizing Criticality and Program Allocation Behavior

I ran across a concept called "self-organized criticality" while investigating chaos. The term refers to simple systems that nonetheless give rise to critical points. The original investigation I believe was of pouring sand onto a surface, which builds up into a pile, and occasionally causes avalanches.

In computing, this could be represented by balanced trees, cellular automata, and similar structures.

If such programs give rise to unpredictable critical points, then this could cause chaotic allocation behavior from a simple program.