Theory 32/Efficiency vs Resilience/Networks
Efficient Networks Are Fragile
The claim
Network transport efficiency trades against redundancy, so a network optimised for short paths has few alternative routes and fails abruptly.
01Mechanism
Efficiency removes the long-range links that provide alternatives; redundancy costs length but absorbs failures.
02Prediction
Efficiency should anti-correlate with robustness.
03Refutation
Both rising together would remove the trade-off.