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While I agree with you generally, one could make the argument that if your aim is to drastically disrupt some domain, you may wish to adopt a riskier but faster

While I agree with you generally, one could make the argument that if your aim is to drastically disrupt some domain, you may wish to adopt a riskier but faster path even if you're working in a safety-critical field, because the "slow and safe" route means more lives lost / negatively impacted while you slowly perfect your solution. If you'd humor my extreme utilitarian view for a minute, I would argue both autonomous self driving and some medical endeavors could save many more lives if we, as a society, said "you get a budget of 10k. 10k lives you can severely negatively impact to deliver impact greater than that number" - basically giving you an investment/debt you repay to society via your future impact. Currently, traffic fatalities are at ~38k/year in the US (with over 2M/year injured), and the numbers for leading medical causes are staggering (heart disease ~700k/year, cancer ~600k/year, etc.). I would argue our current processes for breakthroughs in areas where health or safety are involved simply lean too far towards the "safe" end of the spectrum. One anecdote I can share is a friend who worked for over a decade on a system where patients could buy a medical test at a pharmacy, take a urine sample at home, and get lab quality results using their phone's camera. The tech was ready in their first year of running. They built a suite of validations and tested things across hundreds of phone models, they really did their part well because they truly care. Getting things FDA approved and in patients' hands took much longer, because the processes are extremally slow and designed to reduce risk by almost all means necessary. While that's a good idea in theory, it didn't stop a scam like Theranos (because when you're intentionally dishonest rules don't always help), and it did make it so my friend's company took a lot longer before being able to get fast, accurate, test results for many different metrics to rural and poor communities where lab testing can be an issue...

hef19898 4y ago
Theranos isbthe exception proofing the FDA right, the 737 Max is the exception proofing the FAA right. And no, there is no such thing as a "budget" of lost lives to further innovation. That approach is just deeply cynic, and should ve in itself ground to not work in any of those industries. The 737 Max and Theranos do show so that there already to many people with that exact mindset out and about. And while Theranos didn't cause any death (at least not that I am aware of), the MAX indeed did. All for profit, all for moving fast. For me, that is simply not acceptable.
- TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
  I agree with you fully. However, the way I read int0x2e’s comment was as a theoretical example of the logic they were putting forth. Not as advocacy for actually taking that tact. Typically we empower governments with restraints to prevent them from allowing those tactics, and for good reason. (Even if in reality it is imperfect).
- bruce511 4y ago
  >> And while Theranos didn't cause any death (at least not that I am aware of), the MAX indeed did The Max killed 346. Theranos is directly related to 1 (Ian gibbons) but it is probable that the indirect number is much much higher. Between suicides for false positives, and lack of treatment for false negatives, there are significant outcomes. Given that they delivered at least 150 000 incorrect results, I'm going to wildly speculate here that they are more deadly than Boeing. Context matters. Good strategies for a social media company does not necessarily make it good advice for companies in another context. Turns out "breaking things" is not terribly good advice to airplanes or medicine.
FridgeSeal 4y ago
> as a society, said "you get a budget of 10k. 10k lives you can severely negatively impact to deliver impact greater than that number" 10k negative impacts multiplied by every startup, most of which will never get to the stage where they’re able to deliver their “benefit”, and even then, how do we quantify whether it was worth the cost?

hef19898 4y ago

Theranos isbthe exception proofing the FDA right, the 737 Max is the exception proofing the FAA right. And no, there is no such thing as a "budget" of lost lives to further innovation. That approach is just deeply cynic, and should ve in itself ground to not work in any of those industries. The 737 Max and Theranos do show so that there already to many people with that exact mindset out and about. And while Theranos didn't cause any death (at least not that I am aware of), the MAX indeed did. All for profit, all for moving fast. For me, that is simply not acceptable.

TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
I agree with you fully. However, the way I read int0x2e’s comment was as a theoretical example of the logic they were putting forth. Not as advocacy for actually taking that tact. Typically we empower governments with restraints to prevent them from allowing those tactics, and for good reason. (Even if in reality it is imperfect).
bruce511 4y ago
>> And while Theranos didn't cause any death (at least not that I am aware of), the MAX indeed did The Max killed 346. Theranos is directly related to 1 (Ian gibbons) but it is probable that the indirect number is much much higher. Between suicides for false positives, and lack of treatment for false negatives, there are significant outcomes. Given that they delivered at least 150 000 incorrect results, I'm going to wildly speculate here that they are more deadly than Boeing. Context matters. Good strategies for a social media company does not necessarily make it good advice for companies in another context. Turns out "breaking things" is not terribly good advice to airplanes or medicine.

FridgeSeal 4y ago

> as a society, said "you get a budget of 10k. 10k lives you can severely negatively impact to deliver impact greater than that number" 10k negative impacts multiplied by every startup, most of which will never get to the stage where they’re able to deliver their “benefit”, and even then, how do we quantify whether it was worth the cost?