# When to Delete Everything

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2017/07/06/when-to-delete-everything/
- Published: 2017-07-06T17:18:59+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

Did you notice how we create complexity to solve complexity? I did, and then I wanted
to delete everything.

Tabula rasa means blank slate. It is coming from the requirement of erasing by melting
the layer of wax used to write things on back in the Roman days. In time it has 
transcended this mundane meaning into a [full fledged philosophical concept](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa).
I am asking when to dive in it.

#### All systems decay because of increasing complexity.

Look at the world. Most of the problems we’re experiencing are because we kept adding
layers or abstraction, special cases, dependencies, external assets and most likely
other forms of complexity.

Complexity tends to increase because of constraint. Constraint acts as a factor 
of progress in the blank slate phase, or initial state. In the beginning, constraint
harbors complexity-decreasing innovation. However, in later stages constraint creates
exclusively complexity-increasing innovation: time constraints bring dependencies,
resource constraints bring external assets, architectural constraints bring special
cases and finally, the biggest barrier, human capacity of managing detail brings
layers of abstraction.

All complex systems have a decay level inversely proportional to decoupling. That
means we have fake complexity, a complexity which only appears to us because we 
don’t see the parts of the system, either because we don’t filter out information
correctly or because our information is incomplete.

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little known fact of life, pictured above

#### The opposite of complexity is not simplicity

A simple system solves a small problem. That is the biggest mistake we make in reducing
complexity: simplifying systems. By introducing actions that increase simplicity,
the system will by default not be able to solve the same problems. We’re tricked
by ourselves because the system will be able to solve the same kind of problems,
just not the same problems.

The generator of complexity is evolution. We’re constantly pushing systems to do
more and we try to reuse as much as possible, because of constraints. So the system
evolves. It appears as if it is getting better, flabbergasting us with the decline
in effectiveness.

It is the same principle found in biology, and probably the main argument of evolution
based atheism: if we were made from a blank slate there would have been better decisions
in place. But we were not, we are features stacked on top of an ancient chassis.

Evolution granted us access to capacities far beyond the original design intended,
but by doing that, the overall system decayed in a state of immense complexity: 
a psychological level of abstraction that is almost disconnected from the basic 
needs of survival (suicide), brain development added the huge dependency on others(
immense social needs), our capacity of making tools brought in huge amounts of external
assets in one’s life (extraction of resources from environment) and finally our 
self reflective natures that make our inner selves look like an endless spiral of
nested special cases, a kind of expert system that is good at running only one single
precise life, yours, not any other.

#### Use clarity

So what is the opposite of complexity then? Clarity. Clarity is the product of adaptation.

We are too afraid to start over. We repeat the “rewrite” mistake whenever we start
over.The rewrite mistake is the bad assumption that a start over includes rebuilding
what is already built. That’s why revolutions suck at solving social problems. When
we rewrite the basic things we start by being the same flawed agents so we incorporate
the same mistakes all over again in the new design. Plus, we loose all the countless
iterations of progress and advancement which perfected regions of the system to 
crystal clarity.

Starting over implies a few steps:

 1. identify if the problem is that big in the first place so that it requires a system
 2. export processed and formatted data from the current system in all aspects defined
    in the problem
 3. open the current system in all places that affect the data it exports
 4. build the new system using data storage and processing from the old system

Old systems can be adapted almost endlessly and there is only one kind of event 
that makes adaptation impossible: cataclysmic events. There are two kinds of cataclysms:
acute and chronic. Acute ones disrupt the world of the system so deep and hard that
the problems it solved are no longer available. Chronic ones are pervasive and subversive,
they steadily but relentlessly alter the nature of problems, so much that at some
point the system solves irrelevant problems. The meteor that changed the climate
which led to the dinosaurs going extinct is an acute cataclysmic event. Humans are
a chronic cataclysm for ecosystems. New types of exclusively digital money is a 
chronic cataclysm for the banking industry. And so on. Only evolution solves cataclysmic
events.

So, in short, tabula rasa should always mean, bring another tabula and leave the
curent one as legible as possible.

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