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Preparedness Paradox

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Re: Preparedness Paradox

#21

Post by BitwiseFool »

Jtsummers wrote: post #14
perrygeo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this all the time in software development. No media hype involved. I worked with a senior engineer who had a brilliant knack for finding design flaws in review (usually security or performance issues) and would put in heroic efforts to fix them before they went to production. Someone privately called him out as an obstructionist - "He's constantly worried about BadThing happening, but it never does! He's just w…

Related: https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_.... "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened" by Repenning and Sterman.

I'm getting a 404, is there an archive link elsewhere?

Edit: It's been fixed.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#22

Post by tunesmith »

Jtsummers wrote: post #19
tunesmith wrote: post #18

I don't understand why it's called a paradox. It's just people having trouble understanding counterfactuals. Getting better at systems thinking is a great way to get better at avoiding this. At work I've learned to point out "we wouldn't need to spend time on this if we invested the time to implement X", so the product folks are more aware of the counterfactuals when it comes time to justify the investment.

> It's just people having trouble understanding counterfactuals. You've just described most paradoxes. From the definition of "paradox": > a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.

How odd, I've never come across that definition of paradox. I've always understood it to be purely self-contradictory, like: This sentence is false. If I take it to be false, it's true; if I take it to be true, it's false. The proper understanding is that it actually has no semantic meaning, but it certainly doesn't prove to be well-founded or true.

Using "paradox" for something like this concept though is along the lines of also using it for the phenomenon of people appearing to vote against their self-interest. They keep doing it, we don't understand why - it might be that they're stupid, it might be that we don't understand enough of their perspective, but it just doesn't strike me as a paradox. Not unless every phenomenon we don't understand is also a paradox. Are software bugs paradoxes?

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#23

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

_int3_ wrote: post #6
clarge1120 wrote: post #3

“Y2K was a hoax”, is an example of this bias.

Then why South Korea and Italy didn't suffer Y2K problems. And invested little to nothing in Y2K remediation.

Y2k wasn't a hoax but it was exploited and hyped.

There was definitely the possibility of really bad impacts on critical infrastructure. If we had all behaved like Italy then I think it could have been quite bad.

The majority of y2k work I saw on the ground was companies using it as an excuse to upgrade all their kit. I did some assessments and was asked more than once to emphasise the risk a bit more.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#24

Post by pbreit »

tunesmith wrote: post #18

I don't understand why it's called a paradox. It's just people having trouble understanding counterfactuals. Getting better at systems thinking is a great way to get better at avoiding this. At work I've learned to point out "we wouldn't need to spend time on this if we invested the time to implement X", so the product folks are more aware of the counterfactuals when it comes time to justify the investment.

The reverse may also be true: that the "preparedness" truly was unnecessary. No one will ever know.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#25

Post by Jtsummers »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #21
Jtsummers wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_.... "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened" by Repenning and Sterman.

I'm getting a 404, is there an archive link elsewhere? Edit: It's been fixed.

Fixed the link.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#26

Post by Swenrekcah »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #21
Jtsummers wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_.... "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened" by Repenning and Sterman.

I'm getting a 404, is there an archive link elsewhere? Edit: It's been fixed.

Nobody got credit for the site being up so the sysadmin quit

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#28

Post by someweirdperson »

zoover2020 wrote: post #20
someweirdperson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll be able to retry the same scenario but without preparation in 16 years.

Why without preparation? We all know the epoch integer will overflow on 32-bit systems in 20388

Because as it seems Y2K was a hoax (see ggp), so why should we prepare next time?

Plus, noone in charge to decide will understand the significance of such a weird date.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#29

Post by tunesmith »

pbreit wrote: post #24
tunesmith wrote: post #18

I don't understand why it's called a paradox. It's just people having trouble understanding counterfactuals. Getting better at systems thinking is a great way to get better at avoiding this. At work I've learned to point out "we wouldn't need to spend time on this if we invested the time to implement X", so the product folks are more aware of the counterfactuals when it comes time to justify the investment.

The reverse may also be true: that the "preparedness" truly was unnecessary. No one will ever know.

I guess that gets me closer to understanding it, thanks. If we consider an example where the potential outcome is truly unknowable. If we don't prepare, it might happen; if we do, it might not have ever happened. So in that sense, the Y2K bug isn't a good example, but perhaps preparing for catastrophic low-probability events like "AI paper-clip doom" is.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#30

Post by bee_rider »

tunesmith wrote: post #22
Jtsummers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just people having trouble understanding counterfactuals. You've just described most paradoxes. From the definition of "paradox": > a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.

How odd, I've never come across that definition of paradox. I've always understood it to be purely self-contradictory, like: This sentence is false. If I take it to be false, it's true; if I take it to be true, it's false. The proper understanding is that it actually has no semantic meaning, but it certainly doesn't prove to be well-founded or true. Using "paradox" for something like this concept though is along the…

Yeah, this is something that has always bugged be a tiny bit. I was more familiar with the idea of a paradox as something like your definition -- containing an actual contradiction. But it seems to be used instead to describe any initially counterintuitive situation.

It is tempting to attribute this to a technical/non-technical difference (similar to fallacy, which in non-technical discussion has been expanded to basically include almost any bad argument). But somehow the Birthday "Paradox" has managed to stick in probability.

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