Being Slow to Criticise

This doesn't support the point but the conversation reminded me about something I read a while ago that is related. Maybe you will find it interesting.

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/the...

The researchers found that a problem with brainstorming is the verbal component - due to social factors and limited oral and aural bandwidth, less ideas get shared, and people forget what they were about to say.

They decided 'brainwriting' is more effective, particularly 'asynchronous brainwriting' which alternates between writing your own ideas in a group, then reviewing others' ideas. This method would support want you want - getting all the ideas out quickly, because people are less likely to hold back, then iterating on them.

It's simultaneously not that complicated and more complicated.

The idea that "markets are rational" is an extension of the idea that "economic self-interest is rational." That's a political and moral position - essentially equivalent to "greed is good" - and not an empirical argument. You can certainly argue strongly against it, and many people have.

The second-order question is whether markets are genuinely rational in the sense of fulfilling the contract implied by ideas like rational price discovery, accurate predictions of future prospect ("pricing in", etc), and so on.

You can agree with the first position and still argue strongly against the second.

For markets to be "rational" in the sense that's usually meant, both positions have to be true. IMO this is simply nonsense. There's no empirical evidence that markets behave any more rationally or are any better at predicting the future than a herd of animals or a school of fish is, and plenty of evidence - not least regular crashes - that markets are actually very bad at fortune-telling.

The third order question is whether markets are "rational" in the sense that they create a political and economic reality distortion field which benefits their own interests at the expense of the wider economy. This is another political position, but it implies agency - almost a form of sentience - which predicts national and international policy because it influences it - rather than being influenced by it.

IMO this third position is closest to truth. Markets are politics by other means, and the successes come from having access to political and economic leverage that other classes don't have. The idea that markets are "wise" or even good at price discovery is questionable at best. But market morality is clearly a very influential thing, and it's easier to look like a winner when you have your fingers on the scales.

I think the current market rally is an example of this effect. "Markets" are hoping they have enough influence with the Fed and Trump's government to keep a privileged position above the carnage that's going to spread through the rest of the economy. And this is what has really been "priced in."

We'll see if that's what happens.

Except that you don't always know all the ways the system needs to be tested. I've come across code that was broken, seriously broken, multiple thousands of pounds broken, because someone replaced apparently pointless code with something simpler, tested every case they thought of, and deployed it.

Are your tests really complete? Have you tested everything?

Perhaps we simply work in different fields, and there are things that matter to me that you would shrug off and not care about.

Thanks for good advice

> By showing you understand the constraints the developers were under

And when you take this approach, maybe all of you together will discover that some of those constraints are the things you'd like to change

Related: I think often when sbd has a seemingly silly idea, there's a good idea just nearby, when tweaking the initial idea a little bit

Then good to keep {those who suggested the idea) happy so they'll help out with tweaking and improving the idea