The original Cosmos by Carl Sagan [1] has a fantastic episode called "The Persistence of Memory" in which he compares the collective intelligence and pathways of cities to the brain, DNA, etc. if you've never seen it, I highly recommend it.
Lately I have been wondering if macro-behaviors themselves aren't something like streets in an old world city -- laid out thousands of years ago for long-forgotten purposes.
I was in a meeting with a senior (in both age and position) technical advisor, asking about an HR issues in our organization.
"Why haven't we tried [optimizing]?" I asked. Sparing HN the details, my organization conducts HR to minimize risks, not to maximize gains.
"We tried once, but failed. The system now works. There's no need to change it." This system, originally programmed in DOS (yes, that DOS), was ported years ago over into an emulator that runs atop HTML (that's right -- to use this system our operators boot up an old version of IE that pretends it's DOS). And nobody has ever thought that perhaps there's a better way to do business.
Solidified pathways. Cognitive arteries caked over in plaque over years of use. Like paved-over cobblestone.