{"id":55840,"date":"2020-12-02T08:43:01","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T13:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55840"},"modified":"2020-12-02T08:43:01","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T13:43:01","slug":"2021-is-already-optimized-for-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55840","title":{"rendered":"2021 is Already Optimized for Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oftwominds.com\/blognov20\/optimized-failure11-20.html\">2021 is Already Optimized for Failure<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><i>One sure way to identify a system &#8220;optimized for failure&#8221; is if all the insiders are absolutely confident the system is &#8220;optimized for my success&#8221;.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>I often discuss\u00a0<i>optimization<\/i>\u00a0here because it offers an insightful window into how systems become fragile and break down.<\/b>\u00a0When we optimize something, we&#8217;re aiming to get the most bang for our buck: maximize our efficiency, profit, productivity, etc., while minimizing our costs.<\/p>\n<p>To maximize our goal, whatever it is&#8211;profits, power, whatever&#8211; we strip away redundancy and buffers because these add costs and don&#8217;t boost our desired output. They create resilience, i.e. the ability to survive disruptions, but the logic of optimization is relentless: get rid of all extraneous costs, because resilience doesn&#8217;t boost the bottom line.<\/p>\n<p><b>This trade-off&#8211;trading resilience for optimization&#8211;looks brilliant when everything goes according to plan.<\/b>\u00a0But when events veer outside the narrow parameters of the optimized system, the system breaks down: supply chains break, safety procedures fail, and so on.<\/p>\n<p><b>Even more consequentially,\u00a0<i>optimization<\/i>\u00a0strips away\u00a0<i>anti-fragility<\/i><\/b>, Nassim Taleb&#8217;s term for the ability to not just survive disruptions but emerge stronger and more adaptable.<\/p>\n<p><b>What happens when inflexible, sclerotic systems optimized to benefit self-serving insiders encounter chaotic turbulence or conditions outside the expected parameters? They collapse because\u00a0<i>the system is optimized for failure<\/i><\/b>. Put another way: when a system is optimized to benefit insiders at the expense of resilience and anti-fragility, it is effectively\u00a0<i>optimized to fail<\/i>\u00a0because life is not programmable to a steady-state, predictable stability.<\/p>\n<p><b>2021 is already\u00a0<i>optimized for failure<\/i>\u00a0in key ways:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>1. The mRNA vaccines have not been properly tested to answer essential questions such as: can a vaccinated individual retain enough of the virus to infect an unvaccinated individual?<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2021 is Already Optimized for Failure One sure way to identify a system &#8220;optimized for failure&#8221; is if all the insiders are absolutely confident the system is &#8220;optimized for my success&#8221;. I often discuss\u00a0optimization\u00a0here because it offers an insightful window into how systems become fragile and break down.\u00a0When we optimize something, we&#8217;re aiming to get [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,7],"tags":[21032,24078,4593,5326,587,30652,4266,6856],"class_list":["post-55840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-21032","tag-charles-hugh-smith-2","tag-failure","tag-fragility","tag-of-two-minds","tag-optimization","tag-resiliency","tag-systemic-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55841,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55840\/revisions\/55841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}