CONCEPT
The Catastrophe Equation
Vaughan's structural prediction that catastrophic failure in complex systems is proportional not to the triggering event but to the accumulated gap between the standards an organization believes it is maintaining and the standards it is actually practicing — and that the gap is widening, now, across every AI-augmented domain.
The catastrophe equation names the structural relationship Vaughan's framework predicts between normalized deviance and the proportionality of eventual failure. When an extraordinary condition finally encounters a system that has accumulated normalized deviance over an extended period, the failure is not proportional to the condition but to the drift. The O-ring did not fail because the morning was cold; the O-ring failed because five years of normalized erosion had brought the system to the edge of its envelope before the cold morning arrived. Applied to AI-augmented work, the equation predicts that the proportionality of eventual failure depends on the current width of the gap — a width that is growing with every prompt, every review that is slightly less thorough than the last, every new hire who inherits the practical standard.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The equation follows directly from Vaughan's