Thin But Tough

Thin, but tough, is the holy grail of many areas of material substance. The point is obviously to have as little bulk as possible, but with as much of its usefulness as you can pack into that small volume. It's an idea that holds sway in things as diverse as microelectronics, bridge construction, and furniture laminates.

If you have refined your bulk material to 'thin but tough', you can build up any amount of resilience and flexibility. If you are stuck with 'tough and huge', you have a lot less flexibility, while if you have 'thin and fragile', you are similarly disadvantaged with respect to resilience.

In my long-running survey of education systems in Atlantis, I've come to realise that we don't have much choice. The talent density is insufficient for us to develop 'thin but tough' layers of intelligent education. We have to make do with composites that are non-ideal.

But that doesn't mean we have to aim for low or mediocre quality. We can still optimise for 'thin but tough' as far as possible, by ruthlessly examining our components for quality and reassigning the weak and strong points so that they are dispersed in a way that has maximum positive impact on the milieu.