Our industry's "solution" to complexity is somewhat unique: We sweep it under the carpet. The reason that actually works is that the marginal cost to reproduce

Our industry's "solution" to complexity is somewhat unique: We sweep it under the carpet. The reason that actually works is that the marginal cost to reproduce an existing pile of complexity is zero. Once we've got a sufficiently complex pile that actually has promise, everybody duplicates the pile. And then puts an additional layer on top. These many pile+layer combos then co-evolve (and co-erode ;) At some point, something so useful has evolved that we start copying that pile... and put new layers on top. Rinse. Repeat. The complexity rarely collapses because those new layers can add support beams, if necessary. Worst case, a layer gets ablated, and we try again from one step below. We don't ever go back to the beginning. (This also explains, to me, why Enterprise software is what it is - the complexity piles can rarely be shared or reused, and so there's no co-evolution, little chance to settle on the best pile) And, to be fair, it's similar in other disciplines, but maybe a bit slower. Mechanical engineering has individual components, larger components built from those, and so on. It just is more expensive to copy the piles^W components we know to work. Total collapse is exceedingly rare. (That even holds for human societies - they, too, often "just" collapse down to simpler societal expressions. And we do co-evolve larger and larger forms of society. It's just that the erode-and-try-again process is uniquely painful for the humans involved)