Citation (74)
…this selective blindness that is vital for decision making also means that there has to be a certain amount of looseness, of mess, illogical procedure, dead weight, and so on, in any given system. It will not be noticeable as long as the system is working; it might become more obvious in crisis, or it may emerge clearly when you delve into how any institution has operated at an earlier moment in its history. In combing through historical systems, a certain amount of detritus becomes visible, broken links, old information that was taken for granted, that smelled real at the time but turned out later not to be.