This is a linkpost for On Duct Tape and Fence Posts.

Eliezer writes about fence post security. When people think to themselves "in the current system, what's the weakest point?", and then dedicate their resources to shoring up the defenses at that point, not realizing that after the first small improvement in that area, there's likely now a new weakest point somewhere else.

Fence post security happens preemptively, when the designers of the system fixate on the most salient aspect(s) and don't consider the rest of the system. But this sort of fixation can also happen in retrospect, in which case it manifest a little differently but has similarly deleterious effects.

Consider a car that starts shaking whenever it's driven. It's uncomfortable, so the owner gets a pillow to put on the seat. Items start falling off the dash, so they get a tray to put them [...]

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.