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I don't understand how people take "move fast" and interpret it as "move fast with no understanding". The whole point is to "move fast towards understanding". I

I don't understand how people take "move fast" and interpret it as "move fast with no understanding". The whole point is to "move fast towards understanding". If understanding isn't the goal here, that leaves all the activity as little more than stirring your mixture to accelerate Brownian motion. It seriously undermines the mystique about intelligence being in any way involved with the tech industry.

doytch 5y ago
Self-selection bias. Clearly those who love the saying are predisposed to move fast. But they move so fast they haven't had a chance to understand the saying!
- cbsmith 5y ago
  > Clearly those who love the saying are predisposed to move fast. I don't think that's clear at all. Many "loved" sayings are "loved" because they help spur one into behaviours one otherwise would not partake. If you think about it, sayings about predisposed behaviour can often seem unremarkable. It's like corporate values: the published corporate values are ultimately as much aspirational as actual, because the purely "actual" values are assumed. (For the same reason, if you ask someone what is most important to them, no one says "breathing" or "air".) > But they move so fast they haven't had a chance to understand the saying! Iterating on NOOP can be done a lot faster, and at much less expense, than iterating on something; I'd like to think the eventual steady state of such folks will be to do absolutely nothing very, very quickly. ;-) Hey, human reasoning can take you to some dark places, so I don't begrudge people where they end up. I'm just confused by how... broad? the phenomenon is. I'd expect some kind of Darwinian forces/selection bias that would eventually relegate such thinking to a quite corner of the universe.
  - cbsmith 5y ago
    s/quite/quiet/
im_down_w_otp 5y ago
When your KPIs are "velocity" and your measurements of that KPI are duly myopic, then all your local incentives are best served by the fastest random walk to nowhere in-particular. I've observed this most pathologically at organizations running the "hyper growth" playbook.
tehlike 5y ago
This is a good read on the topic: https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/ https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/

doytch 5y ago

Self-selection bias. Clearly those who love the saying are predisposed to move fast. But they move so fast they haven't had a chance to understand the saying!

cbsmith 5y ago
> Clearly those who love the saying are predisposed to move fast. I don't think that's clear at all. Many "loved" sayings are "loved" because they help spur one into behaviours one otherwise would not partake. If you think about it, sayings about predisposed behaviour can often seem unremarkable. It's like corporate values: the published corporate values are ultimately as much aspirational as actual, because the purely "actual" values are assumed. (For the same reason, if you ask someone what is most important to them, no one says "breathing" or "air".) > But they move so fast they haven't had a chance to understand the saying! Iterating on NOOP can be done a lot faster, and at much less expense, than iterating on something; I'd like to think the eventual steady state of such folks will be to do absolutely nothing very, very quickly. ;-) Hey, human reasoning can take you to some dark places, so I don't begrudge people where they end up. I'm just confused by how... broad? the phenomenon is. I'd expect some kind of Darwinian forces/selection bias that would eventually relegate such thinking to a quite corner of the universe.
- cbsmith 5y ago
  s/quite/quiet/

im_down_w_otp 5y ago

When your KPIs are "velocity" and your measurements of that KPI are duly myopic, then all your local incentives are best served by the fastest random walk to nowhere in-particular. I've observed this most pathologically at organizations running the "hyper growth" playbook.

tehlike 5y ago

This is a good read on the topic: https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/ https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/