Resilience: The Key to Planetary and Societal Sustainability

In both computing and economics, efficiency is a cherished property. The field of algorithms, for example, focuses almost solely on their efficiency. A major goal of AI research is to increase efficiency by reducing human labor. In economics, the main advantage of the free market is that it promises “economic efficiency.” A major lesson from many recent disasters is that both fields have over-emphasized efficiency and under-emphasized resilience. Natural evolution, in contrast, navigates the trade-off between efficiency, which is crucial for short-term survival, and resilience, which is crucial for long-term survival. Two of the major risks facing humanity right now are the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy. We argue here that both crises stem from our narrow focus on efficiency at the expense of resilience. The key to planetary and societal sustainability is making resilience a primary consideration. Just like nature, we need to learn to navigate the tradeoff between efficiency and resilience.