Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems

Why this matters here

Sidney Dekker’s Drift into Failure argues that accidents often emerge from gradual, locally rational adaptations in complex systems—not from a single broken component waiting to be found. How Serious Systems Learn applies that thesis to uneven learning: local workarounds can keep operations stable while masking global incorrigibility. Dekker’s claim is about drift as systemic process; the book asks when tactical improvement downward becomes strategic degradation upstairs.