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I feel that we are getting better at recognizing that complex failures can have multiple contributing causes. In this case: superficial maintenance, negligent management, ineffective regulation, forest management, climate change, housing planning, demand for living near trees...

But I feel our approach to assigning blame still relies on finding a singular villain - and we end up with politically oversimplified narratives about cause and effect.

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i think about this issue a lot. humans as tribal story tellers always require a meta narrative to put events into an understandable format. even if there is no story arc, no protagonist and no villian. as our world becomes more complex, with intractable dependencies between automated complex systems, our world becomes less understandable. more and more there are fewer and fewer "man in the loop" events. our infrastructure is on autopilot and we are at the mercy of its autonomous interactions. there is no one to blame for catastrophes or accidents.

it's like the line from the old RAW book: "there is no governor anywhere."

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