There is a lot of talk about "anti-fragile", but fragility tends to be a discrete way of looking at the strength or weakness of a complex system. In the real world, systems tend to behave across a spectrum, and part of what makes them resilient is their ability to suffer impacts, damage, and recover, over a wide range of possible scenarios. Not that I think "fragility" is the wrong way to look at it, it simply is one way of looking at systemic failure.
Another way of looking at systemic failure can be in terms of "slack": how much slack is there in the system, meaning how much excess energy is there for repairing and dealing with failures?
Today, an AMTRAK train derailed near Dupont, WA, (the state in which I'm currently residing), and our governor declared a state of emergency. They think there was an object placed on the tracks - perhaps some ANTIFA dude, perhaps a government false flag, perhaps a teenager wanting to flatten a quarter ... who knows. But everything on I-5 was shut down as a result, probably resulting in a traffic jam stretching for tens of miles.
Accidents happen, if this were an accident. People make mistakes, if, in fact, human error was involved. And yes - there are terrible people who commit acts of sabotage that place other people's lives at risk, if that's what happened. What I find most interesting is the impact - the system required a "state of emergency", but why the emergency?
Systems, especially complex socio-economic systems, are in one of three states: a) more energy than needed to handle likely events, b) enough energy to handle likely events or (our most likely state) c) too little energy to deal with likely events. "Energy" here refers to the tangible resources, people, and, well, energy, that the society can put into action to deal with random, catastrophic, events. When Governor Inslee announced a "state of emergency" it made me wonder - does Washington State have the resources to deal with these kinds of events, absent some external "pump" of material/people/energy?
"Tight systems" tend to be systems operating at the zero boundary between "excess capacity" and "too little capacity". "Loose systems" (which are ideal) tend to have "slack" - which means IF some terrible event, like a train derailing, occurs, it is, at best, a blip. There are large vehicles designed to quickly deal with the event, adequate emergency response teams, and, overall, the economy is doing well enough that "spending a few hours in a traffic jam" is of very little impact, if any, definitely not requiring a "state of emergency" to be declared.
I think much, if not all, of America now would be classified as "tight" systemically (or "brittle") - barely enough resources to deal with the likely set of offsetting catastrophic events. I said above there were 3 categories, and these have qualitative names: loose (best), tight (minimal), brittle (too little, too late). These roughly correlate to fragile/anti-fragile, but are on a spectrum.
Because of many issues, the USA is currently in the "brittle" category - we could probably muster the resources to deal with these local events, but too many, too fast? - and it could very well lead to cascades of economic failure, social disruption, chaos.
Imagine you have a nuclear power plant - 100 miles north of an event like the one in Dupont today, where the train blocks a truck with a critical component. These components are expensive, rarely produced, have no substitute, and the reactor at the plant is in dire need. Under normal circumstances the truck carrying the component would have gotten the thing, to the plant, in time for replacement - but now it looks like a day will be lost, and the reactor needs the replacement in 6 hours. There are no helicopters to sky lift it, no alternate roads, and the back-up on the major highway is making traffic worse in many other places, on several other road systems. This scenario is a bit extreme, but my point is very simple: in "brittle" systems, there is no slack, no leeway, no room for error. If you screw up once OR suffer a calamity once, you run the risk of cascading effects. You think a train derailment is bad? - try a nuclear meltdown in a region with ONE major highway system servicing it, and that highway is blocked by a derailed train.
Something to ponder this Monday night ...
(and ask yourself: are we "loose", "tight", or "brittle")