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This was adapted from Tim Harharford's podcast Cautionary Tales eps Wrong Tools Cost Lives https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-wrong-tools-cost-li

by Jaepa 5y ago

This was adapted from Tim Harharford's podcast Cautionary Tales eps Wrong Tools Cost Lives https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-wrong-tools-cost-lives/ https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-wrong-tools-... If you have not listened to the series I highly recommend it. His episode "LaLa Land: Galileo’s Warning" is by far one of my favorite pieces of media. In brief it is why redundant tightly coupled fail safes will often lead to cascading failures. https://timharford.com/2019/11/cautionary-tales-ep-3-lala-land-galileos-warning/ https://timharford.com/2019/11/cautionary-tales-ep-3-lala-la...

vxNsr 5y ago
Oh man, it reads exactly like his podcast 50 things that made the modern economy. I was having flashbacks but couldn’t pinpoint why. Thanks for sharing.
dwohnitmok 5y ago
To what extent is the Galileo effect described in that episode really just a kind of survivorship bias? If you've eliminated all the failures that can be caused by non-redundant systems with no failsafes, then the only remaining failures are those that can be caused by redundant systems with failures (or at least slipped through). The way to see whether those redundancies and failsafes are working is to see whether the overall failure rate is decreasing, not solely whether failures are being caused by those redundancies and failsafes.
john-tells-all 5y ago
As a DevOps consultant, I highly recommend this series. The amount of things that can go wrong in the real world is jaw-dropping, let along what can happen when computers get involved! My DevOps buddies love this stuff. I also adore the specific episode mentioned by Jaepa. It clearly describes why "hey this bandaid helps us, so let's do more of it" can actually cause problems, vs helping us be more safe.
timvdalen 5y ago
I really like this series and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone that is on HN.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
For more by Tim Harford checkout the "More or Less" podcast "explaining the numbers and statistics in the news and in life." https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads

by Jaepa 5y ago

vxNsr 5y ago

Oh man, it reads exactly like his podcast 50 things that made the modern economy. I was having flashbacks but couldn’t pinpoint why. Thanks for sharing.

dwohnitmok 5y ago

To what extent is the Galileo effect described in that episode really just a kind of survivorship bias? If you've eliminated all the failures that can be caused by non-redundant systems with no failsafes, then the only remaining failures are those that can be caused by redundant systems with failures (or at least slipped through). The way to see whether those redundancies and failsafes are working is to see whether the overall failure rate is decreasing, not solely whether failures are being caused by those redundancies and failsafes.

john-tells-all 5y ago

As a DevOps consultant, I highly recommend this series. The amount of things that can go wrong in the real world is jaw-dropping, let along what can happen when computers get involved! My DevOps buddies love this stuff. I also adore the specific episode mentioned by Jaepa. It clearly describes why "hey this bandaid helps us, so let's do more of it" can actually cause problems, vs helping us be more safe.

timvdalen 5y ago

I really like this series and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone that is on HN.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

For more by Tim Harford checkout the "More or Less" podcast "explaining the numbers and statistics in the news and in life." https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads