🚀 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗶𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘂𝘀𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵: 𝘚𝘺𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘖𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘰𝘢𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘓𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘴

We often talk about hallucinations, overconfidence, and unreliable outputs in AI — but what if these behaviors aren’t mysterious quirks at all?

In my latest piece, I connect decades of psychological research to what we’re seeing in modern LLMs and autonomous agents. From perceived authority to cognitive overload dynamics, this is about 𝘄𝗵𝘆 current systems behave the way they do and 𝗵𝗼𝘄 that influences human judgement, trust, and decision-making.

🔗 Read more: https://cirriustech.co.uk/blog/synthetic-authority-and-cognitive-overload-in-large-language-models/

Key themes explored:
• How fluency becomes a proxy for competence
• Why overload produces confident but unreliable responses
• The psychological mechanics behind hallucination and affirmation
• What “synthetic authority” means for safe AI design

If you’re interested in responsible AI, system design, and the human side of automation, this one dives deeper than most.

Let’s rethink uncertainty, authority, and where true competence comes from. 💡

#AI #LLM #CognitiveScience #ResponsibleAI #SystemsDesign #Safety #HumanFactors

There is no such thing as a self-sustaining machine. Behind every "seamless" system, every grand "castle," and every "genius" breakthrough is the invisible grease of human effort and the endurance of those holding up the pillars. 🏛️⛓️

Success isn't just about the vision; it’s about the labor we often choose to hide.
https://thelongstand.substack.com/p/the-theatre-of-good-intentions-a-294
#InvisibleLabor #SystemsDesign #SuccessMindset #TheFoundation #EffortJustification

Good ideas don’t get weaker when you share them.
They get better.
This is how Bright Meadow became an open-source think tank by accident.

https://blueribbonteam.com/blog/2026/02/07/open-source-think-tank/ #Collaboration #CircularEconomy #SystemsDesign

“Keep the system boring. Boring systems live long.”

A reminder that in tech, endurance isn’t about flashy features—it’s about thoughtful, maintainable design.

For engineers, the real artistry is in building things that last.

#Engineering #SustainableTech #SystemsDesign #Longevity

I trust systems that can be explained without adjectives.

If it needs "robust", "scalable", "enterprise-grade", and "AI-powered" to sound plausible, it is probably doing too much. If it can be explained in verbs and nouns, it is probably closer to truth.

Design is not how convincing the story is.
It is how predictable the behavior is.

#SoftwareEngineering #SystemsDesign #SoftwareArchitecture #Clarity #Maintainability #EngineeringBasics #ByernNotes

There is a quiet kind of technical excellence that looks like “nothing happened.”

No incident. No fire drill. No heroic debugging session.
Just clear boundaries, boring interfaces, and a refusal to let the system become clever in the wrong places.

Heroics feel productive.
Routine is what scales.

#SoftwareEngineering #Maintainability #Simplicity #SystemsDesign #EngineeringCulture #TechReality #ByernNotes

The most reliable feature in any system is the one you never had to ship.

Every line of code carries long-term cost.
Every option added becomes something that must be supported, explained, and debugged.

Absence is an underrated optimization.

#SoftwareEngineering #Simplicity #SystemsDesign #LongTermThinking #ByernNotes

Most “technical debt” is not technical.
It’s organizational memory that never got written down and slowly turned into folklore.

Decisions made under pressure become invisible assumptions.
Assumptions turn into constraints.
Constraints turn into bugs.

Refactoring code is hard.
Refactoring shared understanding is harder.

#SoftwareEngineering #TechDebt #EngineeringCulture #SystemsDesign #ByernNotes

Processing the feedback I got this week about systems design: I went too deep on edge cases and told it too much like a story.

A mentor of mine had a comment that went something like "that's exactly what I would expect a Principal SRE to do".

I agree. But what's difficult about keeping my agency in this instance is that I'm supposedly being interviewed by experts at the org (one a Principal SRE), so my brain goes "well, they have jobs, I don't, they must know more than I do."

So today, I feel a lot better than I did yesterday. The heavy emotions are gone. I realized as I have been thinking about this, that if they didn't want a discussion about design told like a story about the user, then that's not the team for me.

Humans connect to stories, design connects to users.

#SRE #SystemsDesign #SystemsThinking

I created a new repo for some of my complex systems excursions, here's that design cheatsheet I made:

https://github.com/maroda/complexsys/tree/main/design

#ComplexSystems #SystemsThinking #SystemsDesign