La révolution de la robustesse | OLIVIER HAMANT | TEDxQuartierLatin — Transcript

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1. 0:00Translator: eric vautier Reviewer: Claire Ghyselen
2. 0:14Have you ever experienced a performance defect?
3. 0:22Performance defect.
4. 0:23I have, too.
5. 0:25AT school, I was the last one in sports.
6. 0:30But I still liked to play sports, especially tennis.
7. 0:35I liked to play tennis for fun.
8. 0:37But when I joined a tennis club,
9. 0:40I was forbidden to continue unless I was playing in competions.
10. 0:46That took me away from this sport.
11. 0:50If we look closely, in fact, it is all around us
12. 0:53that the injunction to perform is present.
13. 0:57When we look around us, everything is subject to the injunction of performance,
14. 1:02everything is optimized: cities, countryside, mobility, digital technology.
15. 1:10Is it a good idea to perform like this all the time?
16. 1:16Perhaps a small point of definition first: what is performance?
17. 1:20Performance is the sum of effectiveness and efficiency.
18. 1:26Effectiveness: achieving one's objective;
19. 1:29efficiency: with as few resources as possible.
20. 1:34What criticism can we do to the performance?
21. 1:39I am going to give you four arguments.
22. 1:41The first argument, which can be summed up in two words, is: “Optimizing weakens.”
23. 1:48Here, you can think of the Suez Canal.
24. 1:50If you remember, in 2021, there was a container ship that got in the way
25. 1:54and all of a sudden, Europe realized that it depended on China and India
26. 2:00for vital products, such as drugs.
27. 2:03The Suez Canal was supposed to optimize international maritime transport
28. 2:08and it weakened us by doing so.
29. 2:11The second argument is the rebound effect.
30. 2:15You can think of fridges.
31. 2:17In the 1960s, fridges were very energy-intensive,
32. 2:20they consumed a lot of electricity.
33. 2:24We have made a lot of progress, we have improved them
34. 2:27and today, they consume less electricity, they consume less energy.
35. 2:31But what happened?
36. 2:32They have become more attractive, they are cheaper
37. 2:35and as a result, we have multiplied them, we have made them bigger,
38. 2:39we have connected them, we have created new uses -
39. 2:41we can think of the wine cellar -
40. 2:43and today, the world population of fridges consumes more energy than ever.
41. 2:50That’s a rebound effect, a great classic.
42. 2:54When you think about doing sobriety,
43. 2:56often, in fact, you will consume even more resources.
44. 2:59It's true for coal, for oil, for airplanes,
45. 3:02for concentrated laundry detergent - it's true everywhere.
46. 3:05There is a third argument, and that is the Goodhart’s law.
47. 3:09Think about sports of competition.
48. 3:12If you are an athlete, you want to reach the podium.
49. 3:19And maybe that will push you to do doping.
50. 3:24But think about it.
51. 3:25You are a competitive athlete; your working tool is your body;
52. 3:31and you will intoxicate yourself for the best performance.
53. 3:36That’s Goodhart’s law. What is it saying?
54. 3:39It says, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
55. 3:46When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
56. 3:50That's true everywhere.
57. 3:52It means that performance indicators are toxic.
58. 3:56Performance has a tendency to self-justify itself.
59. 3:59This is true for competitive sport, for education,
60. 4:02for economics, for politics, for research.
61. 4:05This is true absolutely everywhere.
62. 4:07The fourth and most important argument is that our performance comes at a cost.
63. 4:14And that cost is paid for by ecosystems.
64. 4:17Of course, there are several topics.
65. 4:20Climate crisis.
66. 4:21In 2023, the ocean surface
67. 4:24warmed ten times faster than in previous years.
68. 4:29The collapse of biodiversity.
69. 4:31In Europe, in 30 years, we have lost 80% of insects in weight.
70. 4:38Global pollution.
71. 4:40On Earth, there is no water without plastic.
72. 4:44All animals have nano-plastics in their blood.
73. 4:49What scientists tell us
74. 4:52is that this socio-ecological crisis is the product of our performance.
75. 4:58What did we come up with to solve this?
76. 5:05Even more performance, even more performance.
77. 5:09I take the example of giant wind turbines -
78. 5:11those that are really giant - off the coast of the United Kingdom,
79. 5:14they are 260 meters high - almost the size of the Eiffel Tower -
80. 5:19with 100-meter-long blades
81. 5:21made of non-reparable, non-recyclable composite.
82. 5:25Inside, there is balsa that comes from the equatorial forests,
83. 5:29and inside, there’s a seven-ton magnet full of rare earths.
84. 5:33Tell me what is environmentally friendly about these wind turbines.
85. 5:37But not only wind turbines, it’s the all-electric,
86. 5:40all-digital, precision agriculture based on drones.
87. 5:43We are addicted to performance,
88. 5:47we are under the influence of performance.
89. 5:51Clearly, the wrong question is being answered with the best answer.
90. 5:58So, you have to take a step back.
91. 6:00Maybe we can listen to Dwight Eisenhower,
92. 6:03“If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.”
93. 6:09So let’s watch.
94. 6:12What do we see?
95. 6:13Well, we see a world with a health crisis, the Covid crisis recently,
96. 6:18geopolitical crises in Ukraine, Middle East and elsewhere, social turmoil,
97. 6:23the Yellow vests in France, neighborhood riots.
98. 6:26We also see mega-fires, mega-floods, mega-storms.
99. 6:30In fact, our world is a turbulent one.
100. 6:34If you read the scientists reports, the reports of the IPCC,
101. 6:38IPBES, IPBES, IUCN, IUCN, CIA, OECD, World Economic Forum,
102. 6:44all converge on a single word,
103. 6:48only one word to remember from all these reports,
104. 6:50it is the word “fluctuation”.
105. 6:54The 21st century will be a turbulent, fluctuating century.
106. 7:00So the first question to ask yourself is how to live in a fluctuating world?
107. 7:09It is a very big question.
108. 7:11Maybe the answer is simple
109. 7:14and maybe we even have it in front of us.
110. 7:17Because living beings have lived in a fluctuating world for millions of years.
111. 7:24Maybe they have recipes to help us live in this changing world.
112. 7:31So what I suggest is to take you to my laboratory,
113. 7:34we will go to the heart of life and explore
114. 7:37what makes living beings capable of living in a fluctuating world.
115. 7:43I'm going to put on my gown.
116. 7:46We’re going back to the lab - it’s not a fashion show.
117. 7:53That's it, so let's go.
118. 7:55First example.
119. 7:58Body temperature.
120. 8:00The body temperature, you know, is 37°C.
121. 8:04If a pathogen passes through there, a virus, a bacteria,
122. 8:08your body temperature rises - it’s fever, 38, 39, maybe 40.
123. 8:13But if, in the laboratory, I extract proteins and enzymes from your body,
124. 8:19I will find that their optimum activity is not at 37°C,
125. 8:25it is at 40°C.
126. 8:27It means that at 37°C, your body works quite well,
127. 8:33a C or a B, no more.
128. 8:36On the other hand, at 40°C, you are at the top of your game.
129. 8:41It’s not completely obvious, because you’re pretty tired at 40°C.
130. 8:45But your metabolism is at its optimum activity.
131. 8:49And your immune system is at its peak of activity.
132. 8:54That makes a big difference, a 3°C difference.
133. 8:56Some enzymes are a million times more active at 40°C than at 37°C.
134. 9:02Get the idea? At 37°C, there was plenty of room
135. 9:07to deal with unpredictable fluctuations.
136. 9:11And at 40°C, we are very efficient.
137. 9:13But on the other hand, it must be temporary.
138. 9:1540°C is three days max; after that, it’s fatal.
139. 9:19That's body temperature.
140. 9:22The second example is photosynthesis.
141. 9:24Photosynthesis is the most important metabolic process on Earth.
142. 9:30This is what makes it possible
143. 9:33into carbon fiber, a plant.
144. 9:36Photosynthesis has existed for 3.8 billion years.
145. 9:42The first photosynthetic organs are 3.8 billion years old.
146. 9:45So there was time to optimize.
147. 9:47One might ask what is the energy efficiency of photosynthesis.
148. 9:51Is it very efficient - 99%?
149. 9:55Moderately efficient - 30, 60%? Not performing at all - more like 1%?
150. 10:01When we look in the fields,
151. 10:03when we measure the energy efficiency of photosynthesis,
152. 10:07we come across 0.3 to 0.8%.
153. 10:12Plants waste 99% of solar energy.
154. 10:19It’s a poor performance, it’s very, very under-performing.
155. 10:24And yet, it has been like this for 3.8 billion years.
156. 10:28Why? Now we know.
157. 10:31The yield must be this low to keep a lot of room for adaptation,
158. 10:36so that the plants can manage light fluctuations
159. 10:40and biological fluctuations.
160. 10:43There are lots of examples like that.
161. 10:45What we find in living beings is a lot of redundancy,
162. 10:49a lot of inconsistencies, a lot of slowness.
163. 10:53In fact, there is a lot of under-performance.
164. 10:57Living beings do not rely on performance.
165. 11:00Performance is about walking a narrow path.
166. 11:04In a world that changes all the time, it's suicidal.
167. 11:07So what do living beings do? They are robust.
168. 11:10What is robustness?
169. 11:12Robustness means keeping the system stable despite fluctuations.
170. 11:19Keep the system stable despite fluctuations.
171. 11:24Said diffrently: living beings are not perfectly adapted,
172. 11:30they are adaptable.
173. 11:34They don't reinforce their strengths,
174. 11:37they build on their weak points.
175. 11:41They are not efficient and robust.
176. 11:45They are robust because they don’t perform well.
177. 11:51With that, we are now going to explore this lesson in the social world.
178. 11:55So I take off my gown.
179. 12:02Imagine that you are a plant and you want to become more robust.
180. 12:09What could you do?
181. 12:11Perhaps the first thing
182. 12:12is that you could increase the diversity of your activities.
183. 12:17Having several strings to your bow is a good idea if the situation changes.
184. 12:22The second thing: maybe you would have objects that are a bit more DIY,
185. 12:26that you can repair yourself, modulate yourself, more versatile.
186. 12:30That's a form of robustness too.
187. 12:32Another thing is on your paths.
188. 12:35Instead of always taking the shortest path,
189. 12:38maybe we can take side roads, more random paths.
190. 12:43Make other encounters.
191. 12:44And so, the day the shortest path is blocked,
192. 12:47you have alternatives that you have already practiced,
193. 12:50other encounters that may be useful to you if there is a problem.
194. 12:55It's robustness.
195. 12:56You will tell me that it is utopian to switch from performance to robustness.
196. 13:01Is the world really ready to switch from performance to robustness?
197. 13:07The good news is that yes, in fact, we are already in the process of moving
198. 13:11into the world of robustness.
199. 13:13Let me give you a few examples.
200. 13:16Farming.
201. 13:18Intensive agriculture is an agriculture of performance,
202. 13:23through fertilizers, pesticides, and the alienation of peasants.
203. 13:27We are in the process of letting it go, because of negative externalities.
204. 13:31We are in the process of switching to agroecology,
205. 13:34permaculture, Creole gardens in the Caribbean.
206. 13:38It is an agriculture that is based on biodiversity.
207. 13:42This is what I call the agriculture of inaccuracy.
208. 13:47This type of agriculture is obviously much more robust,
209. 13:50because the plots are autonomous,
210. 13:53they are capable of managing droughts
211. 13:56and pathogens themselves thanks to the cultivated diversity.
212. 14:00A second example is repair shops.
213. 14:04Citizen repair shops are exploding.
214. 14:09But it is also the big companies that are starting
215. 14:12to sell repair services along with their products.
216. 14:15In fact, if we look more broadly,
217. 14:17it is a shift from the proprietary economy to the economy of use.
218. 14:25That is robust and is in the process of developing very strongly.
219. 14:29A third example is cooperatives.
220. 14:32In organizations, there are more and more cooperatives.
221. 14:35Instead of having a house for ourselves, we can think of participatory housing.
222. 14:41It’s a form of organization where citizens come together.
223. 14:45It takes much longer because you have to talk to each other to design, to create,
224. 14:49to manage your home together.
225. 14:51On the other hand, it generates a lot of robustness, social robustness,
226. 14:55psychological robustness.
227. 14:57In these homes, guest bedrooms are shared,
228. 15:00there is a floor for the children, a shared garden.
229. 15:02Often, these habitats take care of the neighborhood.
230. 15:05It's also overflowing.
231. 15:07It's extensive social robustness.
232. 15:10We can see that we have switched to this world of robustness.
233. 15:13It is unstoppable; the world is more and more fluctuating,
234. 15:16so we will also have more and more robust solutions.
235. 15:20It can be a bit scary to give up the performance.
236. 15:24You are so addicted to performance that you may be afraid to give it up.
237. 15:27What I want to tell you today is that it’s in our best interest.
238. 15:32We are leaving the world of human’s and ecosystem’s burn-out.
239. 15:40It’s in our best interest because this new world is much richer in interactions.
240. 15:45We are in the process of relishing a world of poor interactions.
241. 15:49It is also our reconnection to the living.
242. 15:53When you are robust, you respect your body,
243. 15:56you respect others and you respect ecosystems.
244. 16:00It is also a response to eco-anxiety.
245. 16:05I can tell you this in one sentence:
246. 16:07there is not much to regret about the world of performance.
247. 16:14I repeat: there is not much to regret about the world of performance.
248. 16:21In a 21st century that is becoming very fluctuating,
249. 16:25let’s avoid the performance trap and let’s embrace robustness.
250. 16:32(Applause)