this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 15 hours ago

My favorite moment in the book is where they realize that the computer program for tracking populations had an incorrect assumption and just returned the full count if it counted the expected population for an enclosure. Only, the dinosaurs were breeding, so the system didn't catch that the populations were actually higher than expected, and therefore didn't notice when some dinosaurs escaped from their enclosures.

I didn't get what chaos theory was until like 10-20 years later, but to my 12-year-old self it was the first time I learned about how bad assumptions can cascade in real world failures.