Design for Known Variability

Rather than chasing perfect prediction of complex systems, public policy should identify the limited, high‑leverage regularities those systems exhibit (transmission pathways, failure envelopes, typical maxima) and design resilience around them: insulation (redundancy, barriers), monitoring (early warning), and modular responses (targeted mitigations). This shifts governance from forecasting perfection to bounding uncertainty and engineering durable systems that make unpredictable events survivable. — If adopted as a governance principle, it would change disaster planning, health policy, infrastructure permitting, and tech regulation by prioritizing robust, audit‑able interventions over futile prediction efforts.