I think this a great overview of a field and has a lot of useful principles. For example about failure events, it's essential to be aware that failure is not linearly independent – if one thing...
I think this a great overview of a field and has a lot of useful principles.
For example about failure events, it's essential to be aware that failure is not linearly independent – if one thing goes wrong (e.g. earthquake) it's very likely that this will cause knock-on failures (e.g. aftershocks).
What’s more, once a rare but hugely significant ‘tail’ event takes place, this raises the probability of further tail events. We might call them second-order tail events; they include stock market gyrations after a big fall, and earthquake aftershocks. The initial probability of second-order tail events is so tiny it’s almost impossible to calculate – but once a first-order tail event occurs, the rules change, and the probability of a second-order tail event increases.
One thing I've noticed is that people have a tendency to "overfit" from the previous thing which went wrong. For example lots of people thought Ukraine would fall to Russia immediately because Afghanistan fell immediately to the Taliban. The article proposes that we should instead focus on building general resilience to all kinds of failure, rather than the ones which seem most proximate.
There are better ways to make consequential, society-wide decisions. As the mathematician John Allen Paulos remarked about complex systems: ‘Uncertainty is the only certainty there is. And knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.’ Instead of prioritising outcomes based on the last bad thing that happened – applying laser focus to terrorism or inequality, or putting vast resources into healthcare – we might take inspiration from complex systems in nature and design processes that foster adaptability and robustness for a range of scenarios that could come to pass.
I think this a great overview of a field and has a lot of useful principles.
For example about failure events, it's essential to be aware that failure is not linearly independent – if one thing goes wrong (e.g. earthquake) it's very likely that this will cause knock-on failures (e.g. aftershocks).
One thing I've noticed is that people have a tendency to "overfit" from the previous thing which went wrong. For example lots of people thought Ukraine would fall to Russia immediately because Afghanistan fell immediately to the Taliban. The article proposes that we should instead focus on building general resilience to all kinds of failure, rather than the ones which seem most proximate.