The Complexity of breaking
This month, multiple sections of my bathroom broke. The toilet handle stopped working, the sink faucet was leaking something bad, and my hot water for my washer wasn't working (come to find out it always was, something to discuss later).
It made me think about the complex nature of things. Now I am not an expert on any of this, this is just my organized thoughts.
I thought about how the more moving parts you have to something, the more likely it'll break down. This is because each part has a specific chance to break down, and having more parts means more chances to break down. Now there are reasons why something with more parts means there are less chances it'll break down, like safety precautions and such. But, most of the time something like a car which has about 30,000 individual parts has more of a chance to break down then a car made 50 years ago (I think, like I said im not an expert).
A year ago I read a book called "Complexity Theory" by Neil Theise. It was quite the read. Complexity theory talks about how complex systems like humans, multicellular organisms, ant colonies, etc work and operate. There are interesting characteristics of complex systems, like nonlinearity, emergence, and feedback loops, to name a few. But it made me think of the complex system that is my bathroom, or more so my apartment, or even more so, my apartment building. All those pipes, wires, floors, people, people's stuff. It's quite the mess of things.