The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

Re:The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break i... by briandw on Thursday July 09, 2026 @09:12PM (#48854589)

I mean that when you have a system like this and you don’t stress it, it becomes more likely to fail catastrophically. It’s like the Dodo bird. It evolved in the absence of predators, so was easily made extinct. Had the island had dogs the entire time, the Dodo would have evolved to survive.

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Re:The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break i... by recitedropper on Thursday July 09, 2026 @09:37PM (#48854728)

I agree with you--but just fyi I think "antifragile" is generally used in the opposite to what you mean. If I'm remember correctly Taleb has tried to coin it as a precise word to describe the inverse of your phenomena: Systems that prioritize robustness over optimizations, and therefore can handle stress effectively.

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Re:The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break i... by briandw on Friday July 10, 2026 @11:20AM (#48861174)

The point is that stress makes some things stronger. Stress doesn’t make a tea cup stronger because a tea cup is fragile. Stress makes a body or organization stronger if its not too much and the system can adapt. A body in zero g gets sick, but is healthy in 1 g.

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