Engineering: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Today, we don’t have the same level of risk tolerance. People want an extremely high level of safety, but they don’t realize we can be too conservative. Being too conservative on safety actually leads to systemic risk. Systemic risk happens when you stop taking risks and get stuck with a system that no longer improves.

Balancing processes are always bound to a target—a constraint or goal which is often implicitly set by the forces of the system. Whenever current reality doesn’t match the balancing loop’s target, the resulting gap (between the target and the system’s actual performance) generates a kind of pressure