The Optimization Trap: Why Too Much Efficiency Makes Us Fragile with Olivier Hamant

**Olivier Hamant** (0:00)
So, resilience, I used to use the word, I don't use it anymore because resilience is you fall and then you bounce back. Robustness, it's you create the conditions in which you don't fall. This is something we miss because we are going to say it's a problem of the climate, it's a problem of pollution, it's a problem of energy. All this makes our life more unpredictable. And so, when we know that, the solutions have to be built on standard deviations. And so, when it happens, you're not afraid. Serenity, basically, right? Because you know that you'll always find a solution because you've made everything so that it's possible to change all the time.

**Nate Hagens** (0:37)
You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagens. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification.
Today, I'm pleased to be joined by biologist and biophysicist, Olivier Hamant, for an exploration of some of the newest research on what are referred to as robust systems, and what that tells us about the fragility of our modern hyper-optimized human civilization. Olivier is the Director of the Michael Serres Institute, and serves as Director of Research at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment. He also teaches at the ANS de Lyon in Lyon, France. In this episode, we discuss Olivier's decades of work studying living systems, and how they compare to human societal models, particularly in the face of unpredictability. Olivier unpacks what we can learn from robust biological systems, including the characteristics that enable them to withstand disturbances, and what that pretends for a society currently optimized for performance and output. At the same time, we're facing a decline of cheap and abundant energy and materials. Ultimately, we talk through various ways that we might make human societies more robust and dig into the deeper question of how this would challenge the very foundations of what we value and what we aspire to as individuals and as a society.
Today, instead of asking you to subscribe to our YouTube or our Substack channels, I will make a different request. If you enjoyed and learned from this fabulous conversation, both of which happened for me, please share it with some friends and host an in-person convening to talk about it. That's always been my hope with this podcast, and this was one of my favorite conversations in the last year or longer, and so what better time to ask you, the audience, to share it. With that, I hope you enjoy this one. Please welcome Olivier Hamant.
Olivier Hamant, nice to meet you.

**Olivier Hamant** (3:25)
Nice to meet you, Nate.

**Nate Hagens** (3:27)
This is one of the fringe benefits of running a long running podcast is, I've never heard about you, and your name came up dozens of times in the comment section on my recent work talking about robustness and nature. Here we are, our first conversation, and welcome to the program.

**Olivier Hamant** (3:50)
Thank you for inviting me.

**Nate Hagens** (3:53)
You are a biologist and biophysicist, I understand, and you've been working on challenging one of the deeper assumptions in modern society, that of maximizing efficiency is always the best path forward.
And you argue instead that nature tells a very different story and provides a different lesson, and your research is built around this idea of robust systems versus performant systems. Particularly, as I understand it in regards to how human civilization compares to biological system in terms of things like efficiency and specialization, and redundancy and the like. So, for those might be learning about your work or hearing about you for the first time, maybe we start with you giving an overview of what you mean by systemic robustness versus performance. Maybe you could also explain how you came to believe this idea is central to your work.

**Olivier Hamant** (5:02)
Well, thank you, it's, I have to say it in one sentence, it would be that the great simplification is a great over optimization in some ways.

**Nate Hagens** (5:12)
Oh, the great simplifications, inevitability is result of a great over optimization.

**Olivier Hamant** (5:19)
Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Yeah, that's the root cause for me. So, maybe I need to define words just to make sure we're on the same page. So, when I talk about performance, for me, it's a sum of efficacy and efficiency. Efficacy is to reach one's objective, and efficiency with the least amount of means.
So, when you reach your target, your performance basically, and robustness, it's the capacity of a system to be stable and viable despite fluctuations. So, for instance, a tree in the wind is stable, but it's also viable because it's able to withstand droughts, freezing temperatures, so the space of viability is very large.