Such “habituation” is just a property of the way brains work; our senses, and those of grackles, notice novelty and change, not steady states. The fe… - Matt Ridley

In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages did a century ago.

It is no harder to explain than a game of cards. There are aces and kings and twos and threes in any deck of cards. A lucky player is dealt a high-scoring hand, but none of his cards is unique. Elsewhere in the room are others with the same kinds of cards in their hands. But even with just thirteen kinds of cards, every hand is different and some are spectacularly better than others. Sex is merely the dealer, generating unique hands from the same monotonous deck of genetic cards shared by the whole species.

It is strange to me that most people assume companies will be imperfect (as they are), but they assume that government agencies will be perfect, which they are not.