Note, article is not talking about bit rot, I think that's confusing a lot of people. The point might be clearer as: "Adaptability and efficiency are opposing

Note, article is not talking about bit rot, I think that's confusing a lot of people. The point might be clearer as: "Adaptability and efficiency are opposing priorities." Ecosystems face this too. A stable environment will lead to adaptations that improve efficiency, while creating new dependencies on everything staying the same. In a sense, species are constantly competing to make the ecosystem more fragile. If this holds, there are broad impacts to information systems outside of software. broader impact of this. We like to fantasize about the mind being immortal. Maybe we could fix the telemere thing, figure out cancer, hop our brain to a clone, or upload our consciousness to some cloud. But in my experience, being mentally alive involves some mix of plasticity and progressive refinement. You can't have both forever.