I've been thinking a lot over the past year about the tradeoff between optimising systems and making them more robust, so I decided to write my thoughts down.

The takeaway is spelled out with the headlines: 1. Efficiency tends to increase fragility 2. The exception is when systems are constantly destabilised (evolution creates anti-fragile systems due to constant destabilising forces during optimisation) 3. Our society is increasingly stable, and efficient, and therefore also increasingly fragile. This should be a cause for concern.