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People are going to focus on discussion with COVID but to me the big takeaway from this great article is the lessons not learned. Whenever discussing stagnation

People are going to focus on discussion with COVID but to me the big takeaway from this great article is the lessons not learned. Whenever discussing stagnation or regulatory deadlock in the US the default response is to handwring about the dangers things like the FDA protect us from. It’s refreshing to see someone eloquently write about how there is inherent risk that regulation also exposes us too. There’s no one extreme that is perfect but I personally would prefer rapid progress with some mistakes as opposed to what we seem to be experiencing now.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Are you old enough to have seen the thalidomide children of the mid-1970s?
evgen 6y ago
This article is standard punditry of false dichotomies and excluded middles to frame an argument in a manner that assumes the outcome the writer wants to lead you to. I was expecting better to be honest. The problem with 'move fast and break things' is that when we are talking about real lives and real consequences then then things that tend to get broken are other people. Make no mistake, it is always 'other people' that pundits like this are talking about. They are never going to pay the costs of the negative externalities, it is always going to be someone else's life, someone else's child, someone else's home, neighborhood, or vocation. If someone like this author was actually interested in working to fix the problem they would start by trying to provide regulators with the resources they need to actually keep up with a fast changing world filled with tech-bros out to 'disrupt' any industry where they think they can make themselves a middle-man in a transaction. Make it interesting and worthwhile for smart people to work on improving the regulatory process and adapting it to current realities and maybe we can start to make progress that is both rapid and safe.
UncleMeat 6y ago
The problem is the assumption that deregulation causes rapid progress. Regulation can inhibit progress, and I think almost everybody would agree that there are some regulations that cause more harm than good. But deregulation does not imply enormous leaps forward. Antitrust regulations, for example, protect progress by helping prevent large companies from eating up all the competition and safely stagnating.
helmholtz 6y ago
The comments on this thread are scary. I work in the very conservative world of engineering, where there are standards and regulations up the wazoo. Welding standards, CE markings, standards for how high on the car your headlamps have to be, pressure ratings, instrumentation accuracy classifications. My colleagues in civil and nuclear engineering have even more stringent regulations to contend with. Compliance with those standards costs labour and money. It's tedious, painstaking, careful work. These regulations have been hard fought, and have taken millions of man-hours to perfect. But this is why we are able to have the degree of safety that we enjoy in this world. This zeitgeist on HN that goes against regulation, fueled perhaps by SV culture, is a recipe for disaster. Self regulation is NOT a thing. I can write this down for you and promise ALL of my potential life savings. This is NOT a great article. It's a rambling overreach of a disaster that starts out fairly nice, but descends through seven circles of Paul-Graham-Know-It-All-ness. It's a way better choice to be in a future where we are arguing about the extent and content of the regulation rather than the presence of it in the first place. A deregulated world is scary to me.
- imgabe 6y ago
  The standards in engineering largely arise from experience. We have a standard height for headlights in cars because we tried a bunch of different ones and found one that worked best. Without that experimentation, how can you arrive at a standard? If regulations inhibit the ability to experiment in fields where there is not yet a defined standard, we will not be able to reach one, or we will pick one arbitrarily that may not be the best and we will have no mechanism available to find a better one.
  - abduhl 6y ago
    This is a pretty cavalier way to look at engineering standards. The majority of regulations and standards in consumer/public facing engineering works are written in blood. Saying that we "tried a bunch of different ones and found one that worked best" does a disservice to the people that died for us to learn our lessons. Retreading the cowboy attitude that led to these regulations is not something that should be encouraged.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

Are you old enough to have seen the thalidomide children of the mid-1970s?

evgen 6y ago

This article is standard punditry of false dichotomies and excluded middles to frame an argument in a manner that assumes the outcome the writer wants to lead you to. I was expecting better to be honest. The problem with 'move fast and break things' is that when we are talking about real lives and real consequences then then things that tend to get broken are other people. Make no mistake, it is always 'other people' that pundits like this are talking about. They are never going to pay the costs of the negative externalities, it is always going to be someone else's life, someone else's child, someone else's home, neighborhood, or vocation. If someone like this author was actually interested in working to fix the problem they would start by trying to provide regulators with the resources they need to actually keep up with a fast changing world filled with tech-bros out to 'disrupt' any industry where they think they can make themselves a middle-man in a transaction. Make it interesting and worthwhile for smart people to work on improving the regulatory process and adapting it to current realities and maybe we can start to make progress that is both rapid and safe.

UncleMeat 6y ago

The problem is the assumption that deregulation causes rapid progress. Regulation can inhibit progress, and I think almost everybody would agree that there are some regulations that cause more harm than good. But deregulation does not imply enormous leaps forward. Antitrust regulations, for example, protect progress by helping prevent large companies from eating up all the competition and safely stagnating.

helmholtz 6y ago

The comments on this thread are scary. I work in the very conservative world of engineering, where there are standards and regulations up the wazoo. Welding standards, CE markings, standards for how high on the car your headlamps have to be, pressure ratings, instrumentation accuracy classifications. My colleagues in civil and nuclear engineering have even more stringent regulations to contend with. Compliance with those standards costs labour and money. It's tedious, painstaking, careful work. These regulations have been hard fought, and have taken millions of man-hours to perfect. But this is why we are able to have the degree of safety that we enjoy in this world. This zeitgeist on HN that goes against regulation, fueled perhaps by SV culture, is a recipe for disaster. Self regulation is NOT a thing. I can write this down for you and promise ALL of my potential life savings. This is NOT a great article. It's a rambling overreach of a disaster that starts out fairly nice, but descends through seven circles of Paul-Graham-Know-It-All-ness. It's a way better choice to be in a future where we are arguing about the extent and content of the regulation rather than the presence of it in the first place. A deregulated world is scary to me.

imgabe 6y ago
The standards in engineering largely arise from experience. We have a standard height for headlights in cars because we tried a bunch of different ones and found one that worked best. Without that experimentation, how can you arrive at a standard? If regulations inhibit the ability to experiment in fields where there is not yet a defined standard, we will not be able to reach one, or we will pick one arbitrarily that may not be the best and we will have no mechanism available to find a better one.
- abduhl 6y ago
  This is a pretty cavalier way to look at engineering standards. The majority of regulations and standards in consumer/public facing engineering works are written in blood. Saying that we "tried a bunch of different ones and found one that worked best" does a disservice to the people that died for us to learn our lessons. Retreading the cowboy attitude that led to these regulations is not something that should be encouraged.