David Woods - the science of resilience, graceful extensibility, and facilitating insight

Few concepts are more important to our society than resilience. Agnostic of domain, of nation, culture, and scale (as vital, indeed, to the individual life as to the planetary civilization), it would be impossible to overstate the pressure on us to understand it. If resilience is a core competency of our time, it would not be hyperbole to say that Dr. David Woods one of our most important thinkers. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• three mile island (07:20)
• resilience engineering (12:30)
• the theory of graceful extensibility (12:30)
• The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (13:10)
• how do you know? (14:00)
• scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts (15:00)
• retrenchment vs revitalization (16:00)
• the novelty inequality (28:00)
• Simon DeDeo on Origins (28:30)
• Mars Climate Orbiter report (31:00)
• 'faster, better, cheaper' pressure (32:00)
• Erik Hollnagle and Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off principle (33:30)
• graceful extensibility (36:20)
• Douglas Hofstadter and strange loops (41:00)
• SNAFU catchers (42:00)
• dialectic between the individual and collective (44:00)
• Arnold Toynbee (45:00)
• multi-hazards and changing climate (52:20)
• John Doyle (54:00)
• Elinor Ostrom and reciprocity (54:20)
• Lightning Round (01:01:30):
  • Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
  • Passion: History and Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History by Helen Hornbeck Tanner
  • Heart sing: graceful extensibility and resilience engineering video series
  • Screwed up: building interfaces to the knowledge of resilience
• Find David online:
  • Ohio State University site

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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