Redundancy

http://measureofdoubt.com/2011/04/06/the-perils-of-metaphorical-thinking/
So far I’ve been discussing implicit metaphors, but explicit metaphors 
can also lead us astray without us realizing it. We use one thing to 
metaphorically stand in for another because they share some important 
property, but then we assume that additional properties of the first 
thing must also be shared by the second thing. For example, here’s a 
scientist explaining why complex organisms were traditionally assumed 
to be more vulnerable to genetic mutations, compared to simpler 
organisms: “Think of a hammer and a microscope… One is complex, one is 
simple. If you change the length of an arbitrary component of the 
system by an inch, for example, you’re more likely to break the 
microscope than the hammer.”
That’s true, but the vulnerable complexity of a microscope isn’t the 
only kind of complexity. Some systems become more robust to failure as 
they become more complex, because of the redundancies that accrue — if 
one part fails, there are others to compensate. Power grids, for 
example, are built with more power lines than strictly necessary, so 
that if one line breaks or becomes overloaded, the power gets rerouted 
through other lines. Vulnerability isn’t a function of complexity per 
se, but of redundancy. And just because an organism and a microscope 
are both complex, doesn’t mean the organism shares the microscope’s 
low redundancy.
== Engineering redundancy ==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundancy_(engineering)
=== Links ===
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tautology-notes/iTxfLtWBoxA
Category:Redundancy
Category:Irreducible functionality
Category:Metaphor