The eponymous author of the Scott Adams Blog (yes, that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert) a couple of days ago wrote a prescient piece about complexity.  It’s worth reading the piece, including the comments, in their entirity. But here’s a taster:

The Adams Complexity Threshold is the point at which something is so complicated it no longer works.

The Gulf oil spill is probably a case of complexity reaching the threshold. It was literally impossible for anyone to know if the oil rig was safe or not. The engineering was too complex. I’m sure management thought it was safe, or hoped it was safe, or hallucinated that it was safe. It wasn’t possible to know for sure …

It’s our nature to blame a specific person for a specific screw-up, but complexity is what guarantees mistakes will happen and won’t be caught …

Complexity is often a natural outgrowth of success. Man-made complexity is simply a combination of things that we figured out how to do right, one layered on top of the other, until failure is achieved.

And from the comments:

I think government has a lot to do with adding complexity. Some failure happens and those in charge feel they have to earn their constituents votes by “doing something.” This usually results in regulations that work as well as the Maginot Line stopped Hitler …

Humans just can’t leave well enough alone. When (insert anything here) works perfectly the human race will re-refine it into incompetence. Why? Because eventually, no matter how incredibly efficient something is there’s always some Wag out there insisting it could be better. Even though there’s no rational reason to tinker with it, eventually people buy into the need for “continuous improvement” until the entire thing collapses …

“In simplicity is power.”

Why is it that so few can see this? Oh, sorry, Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome.