6 ms·

It can be a mixture of both. It's extremely easy to Cover Your Ass while intentionally dragging your feet when a bug works in your favor. The manager simply has

It can be a mixture of both. It's extremely easy to Cover Your Ass while intentionally dragging your feet when a bug works in your favor. The manager simply has to decide that other tasks are higher priority.

thierrydamiba 1y ago
Call it HN’s rule: Never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to malice
- Aurornis 1y ago
  I’m amazed at the prevalence of conspiracy theories on HN in recent years. Even for simple topics like a website crashing under load we get claims that it’s actually a deliberate conspiracy, even though the crashes have turned this from a quiet event into a social media and news phenomenon, likely accelerating the number of cancellations.
  - arcticbull 1y ago
    COVID years really messed some people up.
    - leakycap 1y ago
      You mean like all the people that died? The caretakers in the years after? The medical staff who never got a break? You're right about that.
      - arcticbull 1y ago
        My comment was not about COVID.
        leakycap 1y ago
        Your comment was: > COVID years really messed some people up. You seem to think that you said something different than you did. If you don't see where your communication broke down, look closely the first word of the quote above. That's you, in case you forgot.
        arcticbull 1y ago
        No, what I said was the COVID years. People became dramatically more prone to conspiracy theories and significantly more polarized in the 2020-2025 period. A lot more happened to people than just exposure to COVID, which was of course part of it. I'm not talking about the people who died or the healthcare workers. There was a meaningful step change in the way we interact with each other and what is acceptable. There was a huge impact to the social fabric and cohesion of society.
        leakycap 1y ago
        Using my eyes, I looked back at the text on my screen next to your username. Your comment was 7 words, one of which is literally "COVID". Then you said you're weren't actually talking about COVID, but you actually meant something about how you think others are now prone to dramatic conspiracy theories. It seems like you're experiencing some of this yourself or are stuck in some sort of race condition where if someone else doesn't agree with you, it's clearly a them issue. They're the conspiricist. While explaining that you intended me to get a whole different message from your initial 7 words, you go on to say that while discussing the "COVID years" that... > I'm not talking about the people who died or the healthcare workers. Why aren't you focusing on these things? It seems much more important than whatever you are spinning on about the social fabric and cohesion of society as you type into a webform to a stranger about how everyone has conspiracies now.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- silverquiet 1y ago
  I recently heard on a podcast where one of the guests recounted what his father used to say about the employees making cash-handling mistakes in the small store he owned. It was something like, "if it was merely incompetence, you'd think half of the errors would be in my favor." It probably is a glitch in this case, but it's hard not to see the dark patterns once you've learned about them.
  - trained6446 1y ago
    Incompetence, filtered by customers biased to complain when cheated, and ignore mistakes in their favour?
  - ipaddr 1y ago
    If you short charge a customer they will demand correct change if you overpay a customer won't complain. In the cases of customers giving back extra money it becomes neutral. His father's theory didn't take into account this.
- lovelearning 1y ago
  The problem with "Hanlon's Razor" is that everything can be explained by incompetence by making suitable assumptions. It outright denies the possibility of malice and pretends as if malice is rare. Basically, a call to always give the benefit of the doubt to every person or participant's moral character without any analysis whatsoever of their track record. Robert Hanlon himself doesn't seem to be notable in any area of rationalist or scientific philosophy. The most I could find about him online is that he allegedly wrote a joke book related to Murphy's laws. Over time, it appears this obscure statement from that book was appended with Razor and it gained respectability as some kind of a rationalist axiom. Nowhere is it explained why this Razor needs to be an axiom. It doesn't encourage the need to reason, examine any evidence, or examine any probabilities. Bayesian reasoning? Priors? What the hell are those? Just say "Hanlon's Razor" and nothing more needs to be said. Nothing needs to be examined. The FS blog also cops out on this lazy shortcut by saying this: > The default is to assume no malice and forgive everything. But if malice is confirmed, be ruthless. No conditions. No examination of data. Just an absolute assumption of no malice. How can malice ever be confirmed in most cases? Malicious people don't explain all their deeds so we can "be ruthless." We live in a probabilistic world but this Razor blindly says always assume the probability of malice is zero, until using some magical leap of reasoning that must not involve assuming any malice whatsoever anywhere in the chain of reasoning (because Hanlon's Razor!), this probability of malice magically jumps to one, after which we must "become ruthless." I find it all quite silly. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/ https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/
  - Ferret7446 1y ago
    That's because actual malice IS rare. Corporations are not filled with evil people, but people make perfectly rational, normal decisions based on their incentives that result in the emergent phenomenon of perceived malicious actions. Even Hitler's actions can be traced through a perfectly understandable, although not morally condone-able, chain of events. I truly believe that he did not want to just kill people and commit evil, he truly wanted to better Germany and the human race, but on his journey he drove right off the road, so to speak. To quote CS Lewis, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- 8note 1y ago
  my first manager told my as i started my first oncall "we dont think anybody actually cares about this thing, so if it breaks, dont fix it too quickly, so we can see who notices"
- danaris 1y ago
  Hanlon's Razor is for a situation where good faith can be assumed, or the benefit of the doubt given. When the actors involved have shown themselves to be self-interested, bad-faith, or otherwise undeserving of the benefit of the doubt, it can be abandoned, and malice assumed where it has been clearly present before.
gruez 1y ago
Why would any manager prioritize this when it's going to blow over in less than a day, as evidenced by other commentators saying the site is already back up?
- AndyKelley 1y ago
  Right. I mean, ideally, because regulations have sufficient teeth that the company's existence is jeopardized by having shady business practices. When "it's a bug" is no longer an excuse, they could have avoided such a risk by having customers buy punch cards rather than saving their credit cards, for instance.
  - ndkap 1y ago
    This administration is not going to apply said regulations, especially when the said regulations us punishing what they are favoring
da_chicken 1y ago
That's true, but it's seldom going to be the case that the account cancellation portion of the app is all on it's own. It's going to be built into the rest of the application, including the parts your happy customers are actually paying for. You're taking down a lot of the site. And I don't know about others, but the one thing that's sure to make me cancel and never return is when a business tries to be a jerk about subscribers. I know one subscription service that when you try to cancel will instead ask you to pause. Except when you pause, the site will make the buttons to complete a sale begin disabled. Then 10 to 15 seconds later, the button enables. It only does this so that they can show you a request to resume your subscription. Nope. I immediately went and fully cancelled, and I haven't been back. I only intended to pause for a short time because I was unable to use the service at all for several weeks. Instead because they wanted to grasp onto every customer too tightly, and they lost me for good. They didn't respect me, so I don't want their product anymore.
zitterbewegung 1y ago
You see this in video games. Game breaking bugs ? Next week. People can’t buy or use a skin(s) for a weapon? Less than 24 hr fix .

thierrydamiba 1y ago

Call it HN’s rule: Never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to malice

Aurornis 1y ago
I’m amazed at the prevalence of conspiracy theories on HN in recent years. Even for simple topics like a website crashing under load we get claims that it’s actually a deliberate conspiracy, even though the crashes have turned this from a quiet event into a social media and news phenomenon, likely accelerating the number of cancellations.
- arcticbull 1y ago
  COVID years really messed some people up.
  - leakycap 1y ago
    You mean like all the people that died? The caretakers in the years after? The medical staff who never got a break? You're right about that.
    - arcticbull 1y ago
      My comment was not about COVID.
      - leakycap 1y ago
        Your comment was: > COVID years really messed some people up. You seem to think that you said something different than you did. If you don't see where your communication broke down, look closely the first word of the quote above. That's you, in case you forgot.
        arcticbull 1y ago
        No, what I said was the COVID years. People became dramatically more prone to conspiracy theories and significantly more polarized in the 2020-2025 period. A lot more happened to people than just exposure to COVID, which was of course part of it. I'm not talking about the people who died or the healthcare workers. There was a meaningful step change in the way we interact with each other and what is acceptable. There was a huge impact to the social fabric and cohesion of society.
        leakycap 1y ago
        Using my eyes, I looked back at the text on my screen next to your username. Your comment was 7 words, one of which is literally "COVID". Then you said you're weren't actually talking about COVID, but you actually meant something about how you think others are now prone to dramatic conspiracy theories. It seems like you're experiencing some of this yourself or are stuck in some sort of race condition where if someone else doesn't agree with you, it's clearly a them issue. They're the conspiricist. While explaining that you intended me to get a whole different message from your initial 7 words, you go on to say that while discussing the "COVID years" that... > I'm not talking about the people who died or the healthcare workers. Why aren't you focusing on these things? It seems much more important than whatever you are spinning on about the social fabric and cohesion of society as you type into a webform to a stranger about how everyone has conspiracies now.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
silverquiet 1y ago
I recently heard on a podcast where one of the guests recounted what his father used to say about the employees making cash-handling mistakes in the small store he owned. It was something like, "if it was merely incompetence, you'd think half of the errors would be in my favor." It probably is a glitch in this case, but it's hard not to see the dark patterns once you've learned about them.
- trained6446 1y ago
  Incompetence, filtered by customers biased to complain when cheated, and ignore mistakes in their favour?
- ipaddr 1y ago
  If you short charge a customer they will demand correct change if you overpay a customer won't complain. In the cases of customers giving back extra money it becomes neutral. His father's theory didn't take into account this.
lovelearning 1y ago
The problem with "Hanlon's Razor" is that everything can be explained by incompetence by making suitable assumptions. It outright denies the possibility of malice and pretends as if malice is rare. Basically, a call to always give the benefit of the doubt to every person or participant's moral character without any analysis whatsoever of their track record. Robert Hanlon himself doesn't seem to be notable in any area of rationalist or scientific philosophy. The most I could find about him online is that he allegedly wrote a joke book related to Murphy's laws. Over time, it appears this obscure statement from that book was appended with Razor and it gained respectability as some kind of a rationalist axiom. Nowhere is it explained why this Razor needs to be an axiom. It doesn't encourage the need to reason, examine any evidence, or examine any probabilities. Bayesian reasoning? Priors? What the hell are those? Just say "Hanlon's Razor" and nothing more needs to be said. Nothing needs to be examined. The FS blog also cops out on this lazy shortcut by saying this: > The default is to assume no malice and forgive everything. But if malice is confirmed, be ruthless. No conditions. No examination of data. Just an absolute assumption of no malice. How can malice ever be confirmed in most cases? Malicious people don't explain all their deeds so we can "be ruthless." We live in a probabilistic world but this Razor blindly says always assume the probability of malice is zero, until using some magical leap of reasoning that must not involve assuming any malice whatsoever anywhere in the chain of reasoning (because Hanlon's Razor!), this probability of malice magically jumps to one, after which we must "become ruthless." I find it all quite silly. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/ https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/
- Ferret7446 1y ago
  That's because actual malice IS rare. Corporations are not filled with evil people, but people make perfectly rational, normal decisions based on their incentives that result in the emergent phenomenon of perceived malicious actions. Even Hitler's actions can be traced through a perfectly understandable, although not morally condone-able, chain of events. I truly believe that he did not want to just kill people and commit evil, he truly wanted to better Germany and the human race, but on his journey he drove right off the road, so to speak. To quote CS Lewis, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
8note 1y ago
my first manager told my as i started my first oncall "we dont think anybody actually cares about this thing, so if it breaks, dont fix it too quickly, so we can see who notices"
danaris 1y ago
Hanlon's Razor is for a situation where good faith can be assumed, or the benefit of the doubt given. When the actors involved have shown themselves to be self-interested, bad-faith, or otherwise undeserving of the benefit of the doubt, it can be abandoned, and malice assumed where it has been clearly present before.

gruez 1y ago

Why would any manager prioritize this when it's going to blow over in less than a day, as evidenced by other commentators saying the site is already back up?

AndyKelley 1y ago
Right. I mean, ideally, because regulations have sufficient teeth that the company's existence is jeopardized by having shady business practices. When "it's a bug" is no longer an excuse, they could have avoided such a risk by having customers buy punch cards rather than saving their credit cards, for instance.
- ndkap 1y ago
  This administration is not going to apply said regulations, especially when the said regulations us punishing what they are favoring

da_chicken 1y ago

That's true, but it's seldom going to be the case that the account cancellation portion of the app is all on it's own. It's going to be built into the rest of the application, including the parts your happy customers are actually paying for. You're taking down a lot of the site. And I don't know about others, but the one thing that's sure to make me cancel and never return is when a business tries to be a jerk about subscribers. I know one subscription service that when you try to cancel will instead ask you to pause. Except when you pause, the site will make the buttons to complete a sale begin disabled. Then 10 to 15 seconds later, the button enables. It only does this so that they can show you a request to resume your subscription. Nope. I immediately went and fully cancelled, and I haven't been back. I only intended to pause for a short time because I was unable to use the service at all for several weeks. Instead because they wanted to grasp onto every customer too tightly, and they lost me for good. They didn't respect me, so I don't want their product anymore.

zitterbewegung 1y ago

You see this in video games. Game breaking bugs ? Next week. People can’t buy or use a skin(s) for a weapon? Less than 24 hr fix .