Antifragile systems do exist. The ecosystem of restaurants quickly respond to demands, many go under within 5 years, but some survive. At the individual level, the restaurants are fragile, but the system of restaurants is antifragile and not going anywhere barring a major catastrophe. True, one cannot be antifragile to everything. Nonetheless, one can determine what types of disasters a system is antifragile to.
If all restaurants were run by the government, either that system would collapse or it would be some hell-hole equilibrium of high-costs and low quality.
Your point about large centralized states is well-taken, though.
The current system of restaurants could suffer greatly, if (1) some company would start providing cheap delivery of high quality food by drones, or (2) some epidemic would make it dangerous for people to eat in public. Well, neither of these would wipe out the whole system, but it’s just what I though in a few seconds; worse things could probably happen. Also, luck would play a great role, e.g. if first we would have the food delivery by drones, and a few months later the epidemic, with proper timing the combined impact could be much greater than either of these individually. A machine that could cook an (almost) arbitrary recipe automatically at home (plus a convenient delivery for the raw materials) -- at least the recipes usually found in the restaurants—could also change a lot.
Yes, having many parallel solutions that work slightly differently, makes things more robust. This is a lesson I would love to see implemented in the school system: have hundreds of different types of schools, each providing education in a different way.
On schools: I agree that it would be interesting to have many types of schools. However, it doesn’t seem like an ecosystem that could work. Schools don’t have strong feedback mechanisms, and for there to be different types of schools there needs to be different types of communities that these schools are serving. The current model of schools is not merely a top-down imposition, but is the evolved form the school given a larger social system.
There can only be different types of schools, when we form communities with different sets of needs.
Charter, Private, and Public schools are usually very similar. Sometimes schools do something interesting with their curriculum… usually not though. I think the place to look for different types of education are Special Education, Gifted Education, Online Learning, Homeschooling, Boarding School, and Hybrid schools. Each of these form themselves to serve a particular kind of people.
Antifragile systems do exist. The ecosystem of restaurants quickly respond to demands, many go under within 5 years, but some survive. At the individual level, the restaurants are fragile, but the system of restaurants is antifragile and not going anywhere barring a major catastrophe. True, one cannot be antifragile to everything. Nonetheless, one can determine what types of disasters a system is antifragile to.
If all restaurants were run by the government, either that system would collapse or it would be some hell-hole equilibrium of high-costs and low quality.
Your point about large centralized states is well-taken, though.
I guess we mostly agree here.
The current system of restaurants could suffer greatly, if (1) some company would start providing cheap delivery of high quality food by drones, or (2) some epidemic would make it dangerous for people to eat in public. Well, neither of these would wipe out the whole system, but it’s just what I though in a few seconds; worse things could probably happen. Also, luck would play a great role, e.g. if first we would have the food delivery by drones, and a few months later the epidemic, with proper timing the combined impact could be much greater than either of these individually. A machine that could cook an (almost) arbitrary recipe automatically at home (plus a convenient delivery for the raw materials) -- at least the recipes usually found in the restaurants—could also change a lot.
Yes, having many parallel solutions that work slightly differently, makes things more robust. This is a lesson I would love to see implemented in the school system: have hundreds of different types of schools, each providing education in a different way.
On schools: I agree that it would be interesting to have many types of schools. However, it doesn’t seem like an ecosystem that could work. Schools don’t have strong feedback mechanisms, and for there to be different types of schools there needs to be different types of communities that these schools are serving. The current model of schools is not merely a top-down imposition, but is the evolved form the school given a larger social system.
There can only be different types of schools, when we form communities with different sets of needs.
Charter, Private, and Public schools are usually very similar. Sometimes schools do something interesting with their curriculum… usually not though. I think the place to look for different types of education are Special Education, Gifted Education, Online Learning, Homeschooling, Boarding School, and Hybrid schools. Each of these form themselves to serve a particular kind of people.