I disagree with the notion that a container ship is a simple system because 13 people can man it. It just means that the complexity is hidden in deeper layers.
Yes! In the future, a whole car factory will have only one employee. His job: feed the dog. The dog’s: keep humans away from the machines.
Just as a ship with dozens of people got replaced by 13: the complexity was encapsulated in simpler interfaces.
Diesel motors: just change this lever. Up is fast, down is slow. But it took a century to refine this absurdly complex device until this simple interface became possible.
I think the point here is: don’t build your own diesel motors. It’s unlikely you’ll beat a good model and your interface to it will probably be worst. Remember: people take years learning from their own mistakes to hide the complexity under simpler interfaces layers.
So what happens to your simple encapsulated system when the diesel motor breaks down, or one of your hydraulic lines breaks? Does your simple encapsulated system them also say "we have no downtime, because we have a simple system"?
You leave port with 10 replacements for every component of the encapsulated device. Or just a full replacement for it.
Hidden complexity in the case of the diesel motor was made possible also because of know failure modes (how many years until the low hanging fruits all got solved, how many decades until the not so easy got too?) and standardization of its components (how many centuries just to understand and standardize the universal joint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_joint?).
But the question is, is the 13 manned ship still simpler than one that requires people doing all of those jobs? ie. is maintaining the machinery less complicated than maintaining the equivalent number of people that would be required to do the same jobs? Arguably yes.
I'm doubtful. You might be able to get to harbor more easily if something breaks down along the way, but actually getting the ship fixed afterwards might take longer, because the apparent simplicity is built using highly complex systems. You see the same thing in modern cars, which are often a real pain to fix, because it's all computers and complex parts, rather than one axle going from the steering wheel directly to the wheels.
> because the apparent simplicity is built using highly complex systems.
More complex than humans, with wives, kids, need for downtime, hazard pay, insurance requirements, mental and physical limitations, and so on? A lot of the complexity of humans is invisible to us because we're just used to it.
