“Man-made complex systems tend to develop cascades and runaway chains of reactions that decrease, even eliminate, predictability and cause outsized events. So the modern world may be increasing in technological knowledge, but, paradoxically, it is making things a lot more unpredictable”

“A complex system, contrary to what people believe, does not require complicated systems and regulations and intricate policies. The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects. Because of opacity, an intervention leads to unforeseen consequences, followed by apologies about the “unforeseen” aspect of the consequences, then to another intervention to correct the secondary effects, leading to an explosive series of branching “unforeseen” responses, each one worse than the preceding one.

Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession.”

Excerpt From: Nassim Nicholas Taleb. “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.” Random House, 2012-11-27. iBooks.

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HKO

Other writers commenting on the recent financial collapse have noted that complex systems requires many firewalls to allow for frequent small failures.  Yet our regulatory state overprotects us from small failures and thus assures large ones.

A similar point was made by Richard Bookstaber in A Demon of Our own Design.  Read Do Regulations Increase the Risk of Catastrophic Failure?

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