[jacques_chester]

> It staggers me that so much prevailing thought still leans towards the idea of complex, highly connected systems as inherently stable, with their natural state as equilibrium.

I think it's more that

1. Systems that spin irreversibly out of equilibrium usually fall apart and so are not observed; and

2. For a long time, there was a dearth of mathematical tools for dealing with complex or chaotic systems.

Most attacks on economists about believing in this or that $obviously_ridiculous_belief are strawmen, giving credit neither for the subtleties of the actual concepts nor the self-awareness of economists themselves.