Comment by AlotOfReading
4 years ago
Biology is one of the most ancient and cutthroat examples of "survival of the fittest" imaginable. Yet it's filled with highly redundant systems outcompeting better optimized and brittle systems. Cells spend huge amounts of resources on redundant DNA, transcription error checking, and redundant organelles. Animals have redundant organs, complicated immune systems, hugely expensive neural systems, and so on.
Human designed systems tend to be less redundant and comparatively fragile by contrast.
Very true! Though biological systems are also vulnerable to resources running out. Also, biological systems are frequently stupendously complex, as well as being robust (contrary to the article's claim).
At a guess, I'd think the difference is to do with the shape of the fitness landscape. If things are failing, or getting attacked and disabled all the time, robustness will result. Whereas a rare but serious failure is much less likely to be manageable.
Then again, perhaps evolution / god is just a better designer than us!