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Well they don't know, and neither does anyone else. So it's either throw out an arbitrary goal now, and run the risk of having to change it and people saying 'y

by roel_v 6y ago

Well they don't know, and neither does anyone else. So it's either throw out an arbitrary goal now, and run the risk of having to change it and people saying 'you keep moving the goal post', or not doing it and people saying 'there's no target or coherent policy'. There's no winning here. Every couple of days there is a bitchfest on here about idiot managers demanding exact prognoses on software development projects, and then we all agree that because there are unknown unknowns, that's pretty much impossible. How is this any different, if not an order of magnitude more complicated still? I think the main problem is people expecting government to know everything because - well, they're the government, probably? But they're just a bunch of people like you and me. The fact of the matter is that nobody knows that much. You can complain about that, but that doesn't change the fact that some things are just unknowable at the timeframes we're working on.

Marsymars 6y ago
It doesn't seem like there really are unknown unknowns in this case though. You can just fix all your non-quantifiable assumptions at current levels, and set some numbers for the quantifiable ones. The problem is that any numbers you set that way either involve many deaths, or many months of lockdown, so no politician wants to say them out loud.
icelancer 6y ago
>> Every couple of days there is a bitchfest on here about idiot managers demanding exact prognoses on software development projects, and then we all agree that because there are unknown unknowns, that's pretty much impossible. That's not what I - or most people - are asking for. We're asking for something akin to the agile product cycle. Give us blocks of time you are spending on the problem, tell us what you are doing in that block of time in a transparent and modular way, and tell us how much time per project you are spending and what you hope to accomplish in that time period. It's... pretty simple. No one is asking Gov. Newsom to say "we'll be back in business in 4 weeks" but he's got to do better than zero data and zero transparency.

by roel_v 6y ago

Marsymars 6y ago

It doesn't seem like there really are unknown unknowns in this case though. You can just fix all your non-quantifiable assumptions at current levels, and set some numbers for the quantifiable ones. The problem is that any numbers you set that way either involve many deaths, or many months of lockdown, so no politician wants to say them out loud.

icelancer 6y ago

>> Every couple of days there is a bitchfest on here about idiot managers demanding exact prognoses on software development projects, and then we all agree that because there are unknown unknowns, that's pretty much impossible. That's not what I - or most people - are asking for. We're asking for something akin to the agile product cycle. Give us blocks of time you are spending on the problem, tell us what you are doing in that block of time in a transparent and modular way, and tell us how much time per project you are spending and what you hope to accomplish in that time period. It's... pretty simple. No one is asking Gov. Newsom to say "we'll be back in business in 4 weeks" but he's got to do better than zero data and zero transparency.