Systems Thinking

A Cascade of Sand: Complex Systems in a Complex Time

We live in a world filled with rapid change: governments topple, people rise and fall, and technology has created a connectedness the world has never experienced before. Joshua Cooper Ramo believes …

Margin of Safety: An Introduction to the Mental Model

Previously on Farnam Street, we covered the idea of Redundancy — a central concept in both the world of engineering and in practical life. Today we’re going to explore a related concept: Margin of …

An Introduction to the Mental Model of Redundancy (with examples)

“The reliability that matters is not the simple reliability of one component of a system, but the final reliability of the total control system.” — Garrett Hardin *** We learn from …