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Velocity NY 2013: Richard Cook, "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems"

O'Reilly · talk · Watch on YouTube

Cloud, DevOps & reliabilityManagement, leadership & organizations

What it is

Richard Cook's short Velocity 2013 talk on resilience in complex adaptive systems, arguing systems operate near the edge of failure and that the surprise is how rarely they fail. He presents a model of how pressures push systems toward failure boundaries.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN people cite it constantly as the clearest explanation of normalization of deviance and how complex systems drift toward failure.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 10 different months
  • 6 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2021

What HN commenters said

  1. “he gave a highly entertaining talk on system resiliency here and introduces a helpful model”

    Entertaining talk on system resiliency with a helpful model.

    sunils34, 2017-04 · Strong recommendation · in “How Complex Systems Fail (1998) [pdf]”

  2. “I encourage everyone in ever industry that is ever involved with safety (i.e. most industries) to see Richard Cook's short talk”

    Short talk on resilience in complex systems.

    pdkl95, 2017-06 · Strong recommendation · in “Safety lapses hobble Los Alamos National Lab’s work on U.S. nuclear warheads”

  3. “I particularly advise to start at”

    Starting point among references on safety and complex systems.

    di4na, 2021-03 · Recommendation · in “Everything is broken, and it’s okay”

  4. “See this[1] short talk by Richard Cook for a very good explanation”

    Mechanism behind transition from robust to superfluous.

    ______-, 2021-05 · Recommendation · in “Try This One Weird Trick Russian Hackers Hate”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: richard cook, resilience, normalization of deviance, operations, failure modes

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