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> In the latter you can spin up a new service in a couple of hours. In the former a couple of months is a blistering pace. In the latter you can harm society i

> In the latter you can spin up a new service in a couple of hours. In the former a couple of months is a blistering pace. In the latter you can harm society in ways that take a couple of hours to fix. In the former, you can cause harms that take months or years to fix (and, with enough lobbying, you can make taxpayers foot the bill).

MichaelZuo 4y ago
Very true. It's quite shocking how often supposedly 'very smart' folks suddenly stop thinking when considering second order, and higher, consequences. Maybe it's a symptom of some deeper underlying problem, motivated thinking, etc...
mikeholler 4y ago
You're absolutely right. The "move fast and break things" position in society is just not good. It's fine if you're doing rapid prototyping on a product that can be easily discarded cheaply and at low cost to everyone involved. It's another thing entirely to move fast and break things without considering the people who will be affected, and asking what they think about it, especially for things that are not easily or cheaply reverted.
lordswork 4y ago
>In the former, you can cause harms that take months or years to fix (and, with enough lobbying, you can make taxpayers foot the bill). I don't think "years" is enough to convey the potential damage unregulated businesses can cause. The time and resources to fix issues can scale well beyond human timescales. This is clearest when environmental damage is involved, whether it be CO2 emissions that will exist for O(100) years in the atmosphere or loss of biodiversity that took O(10,000) years to evolve. Here are a couple of concrete examples of companies inflicting eternal costs onto society that were covered well in Tom Scott videos: The Pumps That Must Run Forever, Or Part Of Germany Floods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseK5gp66u8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseK5gp66u8 Freezing 200,000 Tons of Lethal Arsenic Dust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4nZDSLdIiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4nZDSLdIiM
concordDance 4y ago
It doesn't matter whether or not your new big corp service is in the "takes a couple of hours to fix" category. It will still take months and will be even more unreliable than the startup service.

MichaelZuo 4y ago

Very true. It's quite shocking how often supposedly 'very smart' folks suddenly stop thinking when considering second order, and higher, consequences. Maybe it's a symptom of some deeper underlying problem, motivated thinking, etc...

mikeholler 4y ago

You're absolutely right. The "move fast and break things" position in society is just not good. It's fine if you're doing rapid prototyping on a product that can be easily discarded cheaply and at low cost to everyone involved. It's another thing entirely to move fast and break things without considering the people who will be affected, and asking what they think about it, especially for things that are not easily or cheaply reverted.

lordswork 4y ago

>In the former, you can cause harms that take months or years to fix (and, with enough lobbying, you can make taxpayers foot the bill). I don't think "years" is enough to convey the potential damage unregulated businesses can cause. The time and resources to fix issues can scale well beyond human timescales. This is clearest when environmental damage is involved, whether it be CO2 emissions that will exist for O(100) years in the atmosphere or loss of biodiversity that took O(10,000) years to evolve. Here are a couple of concrete examples of companies inflicting eternal costs onto society that were covered well in Tom Scott videos: The Pumps That Must Run Forever, Or Part Of Germany Floods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseK5gp66u8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseK5gp66u8 Freezing 200,000 Tons of Lethal Arsenic Dust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4nZDSLdIiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4nZDSLdIiM

concordDance 4y ago

It doesn't matter whether or not your new big corp service is in the "takes a couple of hours to fix" category. It will still take months and will be even more unreliable than the startup service.