Complexity Explorer Santa Few Institute

Highly optimized tolerance (HOT) is a proposed mechanism, developed by J. Carlson and J. Doyle, for explaining why complex systems often give rise to power-law scaling behavior. HOT involves optimizing systems to be robust in the face of uncertain environments, by making tradeoffs among yield, the cost of resources, and the tolerance to risks. The optimization mechanisms can be either natural (e.g., natural selection) or human-engineered. Thus HOT applies to both natural and human-designed complex systems.