I'm increasingly thinking that every functioning system has two forms: The abstraction that outsiders are led to believe, and the reality that insiders actually and carefully operate.

You don't incrementally learn a system. You eventually unlearn its necessary lies.

I place a high premium on honesty, but I also like things that work.

To be very clear: That complex systems have abstractions isn't a surprise to me.

It's that any system in which you _haven't_ had to unlearn half your assumptions, isn't a system you've learned in the first place.

At least for systems of any complexity.

Law is a lot more ex post facto, and he-who-has-the-gold-makes-the-rules, than it would appear.

Medicine is a lot more "just distract the patient till the body fixes itself".

Microprocessor behavior is determined, on other things.

Global PKI is a lot more DNS than it appears.