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"Life finds a way", Jurassic Park jokes aside, was the moral of the whole saga: Thou shall not mess with systems you do not understand. Taleb talks about cauti
by ohduran 7y ago
"Life finds a way", Jurassic Park jokes aside, was the moral of the whole saga: Thou shall not mess with systems you do not understand.
Taleb talks about caution all the time for a reason, complex systems are, indeed, complex.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAnd here I thought the moral was "thou shall not be stupid or arrogant". The only way we can understand a complex system is by messing with it.
- zxcb1 7y agoAt which level of abstraction?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAt any. To verify your models about a system, you need to prod it and see if it responds the way your model predicted. Passive observations alone usually aren't enough to even build a correct model. Whether you're interested in understanding low level mechanics or high-level system behavior, the procedure is the same.
- zxcb1 7y agoThis is where ethics come into play
- wincom 7y agoI think there is messing to find out how it works (works best with man-made technology), and there's applying/marketing stuff that we don't yet understand.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThe latter would naturally be dishonest, i.e. malicious. Not (merely) stupid.
- invalidOrTaken 7y agoI like your style.
- emsy 7y agoI agree with you. I don't think you can learn anything without messing with it and it's in our best interest to learn and mess with it. On the other hand I most certainly would not want to see the SV mentality applied to a field that could bring about a global pandemic.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoOh hell no! I used to joke here that people will eat their hats for the "move fast and break things" ethos when somebody starts Uber for Biotech, complete with sociopathic management and utter disregard for law and safety. I'm only saying that we absolutely do need to poke complex systems to understand them, but we should do so responsibly. As the reply to the "playing god" saying goes: "we are as gods, we might as well get good at it".
- ohduran 7y agoHa, didn't think of that when I wrote it, that's a good point. I looked at it from a Talebian perspective, so to say, and forgot about that approach. In any case, I stand with what I meant: that complex systems should be treated with the highest degree of care, and with a "not-do-anything-by-default" mindset. The ramifications of interacting with it can, and surely will, be unpredictable.