3 Thoughts on Resiliency

Nicholas Taleb talks about the idea that there exist systems out there, which upon stressors, shocks, or volatility, grow stronger. This contrasts with fragile systems that weaken with stressors and robust systems that regress to a normal state after stressors.

This idea is getting me to consider weaknesses in systems I use and how to apply slight pressure on them to make the system more resilient.

Solomon Asch conducted a series of conformity experiments in the 1950s. Asch found that social pressure leads an individual to, at times, deny what they believe to be true in favor of what the collective group thinks to be true.

Social pressure is real; thus, it is important to be grounded in a solid foundation of beliefs and values to be resilient in the face of undesired conformity.

Sites and organizations may sometimes post bug bounties, whereby a user who is able to find a bug, or vulnerability, in the organization’s platform and report it to the site/organization owner will be rewarded. This mechanism allows for a proactive approach to dealing with unknown problems.

The crowdsourcing of issue detection is a great way to build resiliency in a system.