"In many fields, policymakers seem to have an increasing preference for simple, large, non- redundant systems of analysis and governance. To address this question, we examine several arenas in which scholars have studied the costs and benefits of different levels of redundancy, including:...

Life history theory postulates tradeoffs of current versus future reproduction; today women face evolutionarily novel versions of these tradeoffs. Optimal age at first birth is the result of tradeoffs in fertility and mortality; ceteris paribus , early reproduction is advantageous. Yet modern...