Against cleverness

"Design Not Blame When something goes wrong, our gut reaction is to turn to the person involved. This is sometimes known as the active failure, ascribing failure merely to the active failure is a mistake. It is a mistake that shows lack of appreciation for systems, for latent complexity, for the reality of how things fail. This reflex is a vestige of an older worldview, one in which human vigilance and effort were assumed to be the primary safeguards against failure. Now we know better."

"A system, as we have repeated, is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. If a system produces recurring failures, the fault lies not with the operator but with the structure that shaped the operator's choices. Good design aims not at perfect people but at ordinary people performing reliably under normal conditions. In that spirit, good performance is not attained when we muster greater attention or exhort people to "try harder.""

Rapid advances in AI, autonomous vehicles, renewable energy, and biotechnology increase complexity, interdependence, and latent failure pathways. Prudence and resilient design become critical priorities. Design should acknowledge limits of prediction and control, prioritize recovery, and shape environments so ordinary people perform reliably under normal conditions. Assigning blame to individuals misunderstands systemic causes; recurring failures indicate structural issues rather than solely active human error. Exceptional performance emerges from exceptional design that eliminates predictable failures by making the correct action the natural action, rather than relying on increased vigilance or exhortations to "try harder."

Read at Medium