Brian Klaas

So the effects of randomness are produced by interconnectivity and we have created a hyper-connected world. And so one of my favorite examples of this is the thing where many of you will remember a couple of years ago in 2021, this little gust of wind tips this boat sideways in the Suez Canal and it blocks global trade and it caused something like $50 billion of economic damage.

from one boat, from one gust of wind, right? And the reason that was possible was because we had optimized all of our systems to the absolute limit such that this tiny little chance event could debilitate global trade.

from one boat, from one gust of wind, right? And the reason that was possible was because we had optimized all of our systems to the absolute limit such that this tiny little chance event could debilitate global trade.

from one boat, from one gust of wind, right? And the reason that was possible was because we had optimized all of our systems to the absolute limit such that this tiny little chance event could debilitate global trade.

And so we see this with the pandemic where a single mutation of a single virus infecting the human in Wuhan shuts down the world almost instantaneously over the span of several weeks because of this hyper-connectivity. So there've been pandemics in the past but they didn't have quite so wide-ranging or quite so rapid of effects.

And so we see this with the pandemic where a single mutation of a single virus infecting the human in Wuhan shuts down the world almost instantaneously over the span of several weeks because of this hyper-connectivity. So there've been pandemics in the past but they didn't have quite so wide-ranging or quite so rapid of effects.

And so we see this with the pandemic where a single mutation of a single virus infecting the human in Wuhan shuts down the world almost instantaneously over the span of several weeks because of this hyper-connectivity. So there've been pandemics in the past but they didn't have quite so wide-ranging or quite so rapid of effects.

So we've engineered this world that is extremely sensitive to chance events, constantly changing in these profound and upsetting ways all of the time, and I think that's partly by design.

So we've engineered this world that is extremely sensitive to chance events, constantly changing in these profound and upsetting ways all of the time, and I think that's partly by design.

So we've engineered this world that is extremely sensitive to chance events, constantly changing in these profound and upsetting ways all of the time, and I think that's partly by design.

there's all sorts of areas in the social world where we are told to squeeze every ounce of inefficiency out of the system. This is true for our lives as well, right? The life hack approach is to always get that little extra 1% of efficiency into your life. And the problem is that that means that there's a cost to it, which is resilience.

there's all sorts of areas in the social world where we are told to squeeze every ounce of inefficiency out of the system. This is true for our lives as well, right? The life hack approach is to always get that little extra 1% of efficiency into your life. And the problem is that that means that there's a cost to it, which is resilience.

there's all sorts of areas in the social world where we are told to squeeze every ounce of inefficiency out of the system. This is true for our lives as well, right? The life hack approach is to always get that little extra 1% of efficiency into your life. And the problem is that that means that there's a cost to it, which is resilience.

Because if you are optimized and absolutely efficient to the limit, the system or your life becomes brittle. It becomes one where there's no give. So when something inevitably goes wrong, as it always does, there's no ability to absorb it. And all of us sort of know this with our daily schedules, right? I mean, if you pad something by 10 minutes, it's less efficient.

Because if you are optimized and absolutely efficient to the limit, the system or your life becomes brittle. It becomes one where there's no give. So when something inevitably goes wrong, as it always does, there's no ability to absorb it. And all of us sort of know this with our daily schedules, right? I mean, if you pad something by 10 minutes, it's less efficient.

Because if you are optimized and absolutely efficient to the limit, the system or your life becomes brittle. It becomes one where there's no give. So when something inevitably goes wrong, as it always does, there's no ability to absorb it. And all of us sort of know this with our daily schedules, right? I mean, if you pad something by 10 minutes, it's less efficient.

But when something goes wrong or you get stuck in traffic, you end up still being on time. And what we're basically doing on a social level is we're taking out that buffer. We're saying the buffer is evil because it's inefficient, which is why when you sort of think about the last 25 years of global history, it's a series of these sort of small changes that have created cascading catastrophes.

But when something goes wrong or you get stuck in traffic, you end up still being on time. And what we're basically doing on a social level is we're taking out that buffer. We're saying the buffer is evil because it's inefficient, which is why when you sort of think about the last 25 years of global history, it's a series of these sort of small changes that have created cascading catastrophes.

But when something goes wrong or you get stuck in traffic, you end up still being on time. And what we're basically doing on a social level is we're taking out that buffer. We're saying the buffer is evil because it's inefficient, which is why when you sort of think about the last 25 years of global history, it's a series of these sort of small changes that have created cascading catastrophes.

And it's why I think we all have this sense that the world is constantly falling apart at a quicker pace than usual. I think it is partly because it is.