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When robustly tolerable beats precariously optimal (2020)
21–24 of 24 posts
Re: When robustly tolerable beats precariously optimal (2020)
#22This is a good evaluation of the way risk posture can inform design decisions, but I think it sort of ignores the elephant in the room: A short term strategy wins more on average in a competitive context, especially when existential risk is on the table for entities who lose a competition. Most solutions to this problem involve solving hard coordination problems to change the balance of incentives or lower the lethal…
> especially when existential risk is on the table for entities who lose a competition. This really just explains externalities. Competition creates apparent short-range existential risk to a business. Real existential risk (to people or things damaged by your defective product because of "precarious perfection") land somewhere else - usually where their impact is much larger.
If something is considered an externality by some system, decisions that prioritize it are by definition hard or impossible to make within that system. In other words, to change that, we have to rewrite systemic priorities to some degree
Re: When robustly tolerable beats precariously optimal (2020)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> especially when existential risk is on the table for entities who lose a competition. This really just explains externalities. Competition creates apparent short-range existential risk to a business. Real existential risk (to people or things damaged by your defective product because of "precarious perfection") land somewhere else - usually where their impact is much larger.
If something is considered an externality by some system, decisions that prioritize it are by definition hard or impossible to make within that system. In other words, to change that, we have to rewrite systemic priorities to some degree
That's an interesting thought I'll give some chin stroking to. Sounds
like something Kurt Godel and John Gall would have hatched together.
Is it a personal insight, or from experience, or something you think
might be attributable. cheers.
> we have to rewrite systemic priorities to some degree
maybe Forrester or Meadows has an insight?
Re: When robustly tolerable beats precariously optimal (2020)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
If something is considered an externality by some system, decisions that prioritize it are by definition hard or impossible to make within that system. In other words, to change that, we have to rewrite systemic priorities to some degree
That's an interesting thought I'll give some chin stroking to. Sounds like something Kurt Godel and John Gall would have hatched together. Is it a personal insight, or from experience, or something you think might be attributable. cheers. > we have to rewrite systemic priorities to some degree maybe Forrester or Meadows has an insight?
I mean I am sure I'm not the first person to have this insight - as I said I view it as baked into the definition of "externality" - but I'm also not pulling it from any specific source I can consciously recall