Highly Optimized Tolerance: Robustness and Power Laws in Complex Systems
J.M. Carlson (U. of California, Santa Barbara), and John Doyle, (Caltech)
TL;DR
This paper introduces highly optimized tolerance (HOT), a framework explaining how complex systems in biology and engineering develop structured, efficient, and robust configurations that exhibit power-law behaviors and hypersensitivity to perturbations.
Contribution
The paper presents HOT as a new mechanism linking system design, evolution, and power laws, with detailed analysis of HOT states in percolation models.
Findings
HOT states exhibit high efficiency, robustness, and structured configurations.
HOT states display power-law distributions similar to critical systems.
HOT states are hypersensitive to perturbations and design flaws.
Abstract
We introduce highly optimized tolerance (HOT), a mechanism that connects evolving structure and power laws in interconnected systems. HOT systems arise, e.g., in biology and engineering, where design and evolution create complex systems sharing common features, including (1) high efficiency, performance, and robustness to designed-for uncertainties, (2) hypersensitivity to design flaws and unanticipated perturbations, (3) nongeneric, specialized, structured configurations, and (4) power laws. We introduce HOT states in the context of percolation, and contrast properties of the high density HOT states with random configurations near the critical point. While both cases exhibit power laws, only HOT states display properties (1-3) associated with design and evolution.
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