Everyone's going on about how serious incidents (like Suez or the Texas blackouts) show that we're too reliant on complex systems. But these incidents are also the only way to build resilience in such systems. We need more of them, at far lower severity nytimes.com/2021/03/26/bus…
The only complex system you should trust is one that breaks all the time, at all scales, and where those breakdowns are routine and the mitigation for it well developed. Never put your data on a server with ten years of uptime
The human response to any functioning complex system is to pile on additional complexity until it breaks catastrophically. So a steady rate of breakdowns, big and small, is the only reassurance that you aren't piling up massive levels of risk somewhere
None of these thoughts original (see @nntaleb) but it's frustrating to watch stuff get turned into a morality play about overreliance on fragile networks, rather than about how to reduce that fragility while continuing to rely on them just fine
How are we expecting to live in a world with massive climate change if blocking one canal is enough to give the global economy a stroke? We need to develop a transportation system of all-weather, all-terrain giant mechas
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