When you look at the robustness of complex systems we design (i.e., IT systems) vs the robustness of the human body, I think it is at least fair to say it could be designed better.
This seems to propose that IT systems deal with the sheer amount of variability a living organism has to contend with on a daily basis. I don't think it's a fair comparison.
At Google (as an SRE), a large portion of my work was trying to understand problems that people have never even comprehended due to the sheer scale we operated at. Reading through code, I would often scratch my head at some decisions, only to later find out it had a really good reason often associated with some high-level incident. I feel the same can be said for biology. Just because it doesn't immediately fit into our theoretical understanding doesn't mean it was designed poorly.
> I would often scratch my head at some decisions, only to later find out it had a really good reason often associated with some high-level incident.
But the equivalent in biology is that we scratch our heads at some clearly suboptimal "design" choices, only to later find out that it evolved gradually from a much simpler system that solved a much simpler problem, sometimes even a different problem.
> This seems to propose that IT systems deal with the sheer amount of variability a living organism has to contend with on a daily basis. I don't think it's a fair comparison.
Might they not? I think measuring such things would be near impossible, but a human body does interact with a generally specific set of variables on a day-to-day basis, and breaks down when new variables are introduced - like when you travel to a new place and pick up a local bug that you have to get used to.
At least IT systems can generally disregard variables they don't recognize.
This is a bit funny to me, considering I'm quite visually impaired, with no medical treatment available :)
Many people lose their sight or hearing - or worse - regularly, often with no medical recourse. On the other hand, IT systems can be repaired and replaced as we encounter or anticipate certain failures
At Google (as an SRE), a large portion of my work was trying to understand problems that people have never even comprehended due to the sheer scale we operated at. Reading through code, I would often scratch my head at some decisions, only to later find out it had a really good reason often associated with some high-level incident. I feel the same can be said for biology. Just because it doesn't immediately fit into our theoretical understanding doesn't mean it was designed poorly.