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Only tangentially related, but I can’t possibly be the only one who read this and thought about a particular codebase... > The answer to these crisis and chall

Only tangentially related, but I can’t possibly be the only one who read this and thought about a particular codebase... > The answer to these crisis and challenges is to build up structures - say, bureaucratic or military - in response. Each time a crisis is faced and solved, society finds itself with an extra layer of complexity. Now, Tainter says, as complexity increases, the benefit of this extra complexity starts going down - he calls it "the marginal benefit of complexity". That is because complexity has a cost - it costs energy to maintain complex systems.

eloff 9y ago
Wow, that's an uncanny parallel to complexity in software development.
autokad 9y ago
I get that way about my models in machine learning. after a while I am like ok, let me tear everything down and make a fresh start with some really simple models
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Indeed - because by then you have a different mental model from what you've baked into the models at the beginning.
OrganicMSG 9y ago
One way to reduce this is to try and enforce that structure is to be dependent on whatever is currently being done, so that any bureaucracies that are created are explicitly shut down at the end of a given task, with a meta-bureaucracy that just has the job of spinning off structures and winding them up, like job management in an OS.
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Perhaps this is a good reason for a stronger social safety net. In other words, while on the one hand it is important to eliminate jobs that produce zero or negative value, or even ones that offer value lower than their total economic costs (which includes opportunity costs--ie children who learn more effectively by another teacher, or on their own), on the other hand it is very difficult to tell people they should be losing their job. One way to fix that is perhaps to entitle everyone to basic needs.
manjushri 9y ago
Reminds me of the spaghetti legal code in the US

eloff 9y ago

Wow, that's an uncanny parallel to complexity in software development.

autokad 9y ago

I get that way about my models in machine learning. after a while I am like ok, let me tear everything down and make a fresh start with some really simple models

Piskvorrr 9y ago
Indeed - because by then you have a different mental model from what you've baked into the models at the beginning.

OrganicMSG 9y ago

One way to reduce this is to try and enforce that structure is to be dependent on whatever is currently being done, so that any bureaucracies that are created are explicitly shut down at the end of a given task, with a meta-bureaucracy that just has the job of spinning off structures and winding them up, like job management in an OS.

wallace_f 9y ago
Perhaps this is a good reason for a stronger social safety net. In other words, while on the one hand it is important to eliminate jobs that produce zero or negative value, or even ones that offer value lower than their total economic costs (which includes opportunity costs--ie children who learn more effectively by another teacher, or on their own), on the other hand it is very difficult to tell people they should be losing their job. One way to fix that is perhaps to entitle everyone to basic needs.

manjushri 9y ago

Reminds me of the spaghetti legal code in the US