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Ultimately, pursuit of perfect efficiency results in crystalline systems which are fragile. Slack is the ur-antifragility. (efficiency pursued for itself is A

• srean 4y ago
  That's because the risk of fragility is typically not priced in. If risks werent treated as an externality this failure mode would be taken care of. Of course some unanticipated failure modes would always come and surprise us. I would be one happy person if the failures we see around us were all of this 'inconceivable' variety. Very few are, except when one buries one head in the sand and refuses to consider the fairly obvious risks.
  • AlbertCory 4y ago
    The "risk of fragility" is bankruptcy, or death if we're talking about a biological organism. For example, the financial entity that makes tons of money speculating in a worthless asset, then goes belly up when its worthlessness is exposed (I won't name the asset(s) to avoid a flame war). You can't "price that in." You just avoid it.
    • srean 4y ago
      One sure can, by engineering a more robust system. This will cost you some though. One can buy insurance, one can make tail hedges. The right mix of mitigation strategies depends on the nature of the threat. Avoiding it falls in the same spectrum. It is equivalent to assigning an infinite cost to the risk .
• rektide 4y ago
  Fragility & simply the deadening of exploration. Assuming you know what you are doing & only ever intend to do exactly that, better, is the ultimate horse blinders for humanity, preventing all other options than "go forwards". Slack is time & permission to consider, reflecr, grow, enables finding new ways to thrive.
• mbrodersen 4y ago
  Yep. It also usually means no time to find better long term ways to do things. Everything is sacrificed on the alter of “efficiency” (basically cost cutting).