Comment by peoplefromibiza

I agree on some of the points.

My point was that complexity is not a single face phenomenon and can't account alone for risk of failure.

I believe we should look at why complexity is there and what purpose it serves.

Human body is a complex machine, but the fact that failure can bring it down to the extreme is because human body is fragile and once single organs start failing things cascades to the point of no return very quickly.

We are in fact not build for extreme resiliency, but for extreme adaptability (not even the most extreme nature created)

A simple system most of the times is built with simplicity in mind (sorry for the tautology) and sometimes because of simplicity is more efficient.

It can also happen to more complex systems, like for example our body which is very energy efficient at the expenses of resiliency. Klingons OTOH have two livers, an eight-chambered heart, and two stomachs. They are bigger, consume more energy and need to eat (and drink) a lot more. Redundancy adds complexity, but have its purpose.

Klingons do not exists obviously, but nuclear factories are another example of complexity serving safety, not more efficient operations.

Simpler systems usually exhibit single point of failures, like for example now with the war our very complex supply chain can shield us better from the consequences than countries that don't have them or can't afford them.

Historically they died sooner and we haven't records of their sudden fall, because they never reached the point were it mattered enough.

So complexity - I would call it complex redundancy -, which is very costly, depends a lot on the ability of gathering the resources.

Going back to the Romans, at one point they stopped making new steel and warships because the huge amount of wood necessary was not sustainable and Europe witnessed the first massive deforestation of its history.

So, before collapsing, they had to add another layer: recycling. Which can be simpler as a process but also requires a longer chain of supply.

Add to that the will of their enemies to conquer them, the lost knowledge on how to reboot failing systems because they were so old that people took them for granted and things can go south pretty rapidly, but that's not an inherent property of complexity, but of fragility.

The Universe is immensely complex, but I believe it's still going strong after 13 billions years from its birth.