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If the intent of policy X is to achieve goal Y and X does not in fact achieve Y, what is the point of continuing to pay the costs of X instead of proposing some
by quotemstr 8y ago
If the intent of policy X is to achieve goal Y and X does not in fact achieve Y, what is the point of continuing to pay the costs of X instead of proposing some X' that actually does achieve Y? Continuing to advocate X when X doesn't achieve Y suggests that the proponents of X don't really care about Y, but instead some unstated Z.
- MBCook 8y agoBecause a simple and easily enforced X that hits 90% of cases is vastly preferable to the 1200 page tome that makes up X’ and requires 175k people to enforce after 20 years of law writing.
- quotemstr 8y agoIn some situations, "perfect is the enemy of the good" is a reasonable approach. Unfortunately, we're not dealing with a good-but-imperfect filter, but a practically useless filter, one that imposes significant costs on top of being ineffective. "Weapons of Math Destruction" presents good evidence that 90% is much lower than the actual effectiveness of X.