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Comment by Anon84 | Hacker News Reader

The author seems to be using a rather narrow definition of complex system without actually ever specifying it. Complex systems (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system) are strange beasts that occur in all aspect of science and technology and fail in spectacularly different ways.

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Interestingly, i promise you they do not use a so narrow definition. Dr Richard Cook is one of the leading researcher in this particular space. His definition of "complex system" is used here indeed in that wikipedia definition you provide and the way they fails may seem spectacularly different, but the research in them have shown that they are not so different and all stems from the same "laws of nature".

I would be happy to provide links to the research if you are interested :)

Not OP but I would be interested in other reading you would recommend on this topic.

Linked to a good starting point here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20382694

Thanks!

Links to original sources are always helpful.

linked to a good starting point here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20382694

Yes I would be keen on the links to the research. Think in an age of big data and AI i think this is relevant.

Linked to a good starting point at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20382694

A good starting point is https://github.com/lorin/resilience-engineering/blob/master/...

My email is in my profile if you want to go deeper :)

This is precisely my point. You're focusing on specifically engineered systems. Complex Systems occur naturally in nature (there's even a whole branch of statistical physics that studies them). So yes, the author might be well know in the specific reliability engineering sub-field, but it's still using a rather narrow definition of what a complex system is and how it fails.

To clarify, there is nothing wrong with using a narrow definition or in discussing a specific aspect of a grander topic. I just wish the definition was made clearer.

I think my point is more that i am not focusing on these at all :)

But the interest in these is more visible because we can modify them and build experiment in them.

A very different sort of beast... https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6404/aa5a87

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