Diversity and the Competent Average

Biological monocultures are efficient and catastrophically fragile. A field of uniform wheat produces predictable yield and collapses completely when a pathogen matched to its single vulnerability arrives. The optimization that produced the efficiency is the same optimization that eliminated the redundancy needed to survive the crisis. Pye observed a structurally identical pattern in the history of making. Risk workmanship produces diverse objects — not because the maker intends variation but because variation is a structural consequence of the process. Certainty workmanship produces uniform objects; uniformity is the point. When AI becomes the dominant mode of knowledge work, the diversity that risk work produces as a byproduct is replaced by the competent average the model produces by design.