[jfoutz]

Fast. Fast always wins. Trying something, regardless of outcome teaches something about the world. The more trials, the more you roll the dice, the more you learn.

I really hate being wrong, but it is much better to be wrong a lot, and quickly understand why. The alternative is to try nothing. It’s kinda sad.

[acdha]

Fast wins for something like mobile apps but not infrastructure where safety matters and you can’t just shrug off liability. The Boring Company is a great example: fast to market themselves but almost all of their projects have fallen through.

[specialist]

Which nascent technologies have became common, dominant by innovators unilaterally adhering to the precautionary principle?

The cliché "Worse is better" describes this (turrible) phenomenon. (The flip side being "safety regulations are written in blood.")

I really wish this wasn't the world we live in. I want to live in a world with consequences (and justice). I've been railing against it my whole career. And judging from my meager savings, failing in my efforts.

[vlovich123]

Iteration always wins. There may be other constraining factors, but if you can violate those to iterate more (i.e. cheat), you’ll beat your competitors who honor those constraints.

This has nothing to do with the success or failure of any given company.

[wizzwizz4]

> but if you can violate those to iterate more (i.e. cheat), you’ll beat your competitors who honor those constraints.

Until people die. Then suddenly, you can't cheat any more. And everybody else has to live with your decisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Thiokol

I wouldn't call that winning.

[vlovich123]

You seem to have misunderstood what I’m saying. Iteration is how you learn. Learning through iteration, which is known under various names like Wright’s law or more generally experience curve effects [1], goes hand in hand with economies of scale in driving down costs.

Yes, iteration requires you to survive. Not sure how that’s relevant. Cutting corners also isn’t necessarily a bad thing - you’re focusing on the extreme example where people die. Cutting corners can also be a careful evaluation of what processes are and aren’t relevant to a given situation but that becomes trickier when it’s enshrined in law. Imagine if guidelines from the 80s about how to write software were enshrined in law.

Regulations more often than not do ignore the flip side in terms of the cost of compliance because it’s difficult to show the counter factual universe in which a regulation may save 10% more lives (or maybe even 0% more lives) but drove up costs by 100x.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects

[wizzwizz4]

> Imagine if guidelines from the 80s about how to write software were enshrined in law.

If Edsger W. Dijkstra's wild ravings from the 80s were enshrined in law, perhaps we wouldn't have quite so many fatalities attributable to crap software. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E...

> A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot.".

[0xFF0123]

It does depend on the domain though. Sometimes moving slowly and carefully can result in a faster successful outcome than throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks.

[Ntrails]

> The more trials, the more you roll the dice, the more you learn.

If you have infinite dice rolls this is obviously true. If every dice roll costs you something or indeed everything... heh. Maybe don't just roll it to see what happens?

[KingOfCoders]

Yes, sure fast wins when building a bridge. Or a tunnel. Which then collapses. Safe wins, this is not Facebook where people share some holiday pictures.

"but it is much better to be wrong a lot"

I disagree, "Oh the bridge collapesed, I was wrong! But this is much better than being right" - Nope.

[trelane]

If you're opposed to fast and cheap, I have great news for you about the cost and pace of construction in the US.

[jajko]

... which has its own reasons, namely regulations (you know, every time there was a new disaster they added another one) or maybe some corruption. You don't see bridges falling in US regularly killing tons of folks, do you.

I am not saying its ideal and there is no room for improvement, nothing in real world is, but please consider other, 'fast' scenarios for long term (100+ years) existence when not only many lives are at stake.

[trelane]

> You don't see bridges falling in US regularly killing tons of folks, do you.

Falling yes. Killing is hit-or miss. I would be surprised if the reasons bridges are failing due to lack of maintenance is entirely unrelated to the cost of building.

There are many ways things could be better, and many ways things could be worse.

Attacking something only because it's cheaper and faster seems silly.

[jajko]

Please share a single recent example from US, I am only aware of one relatively recent catastrophic case from northern Italy, where maintenance was subpar.

Cheaper reflects many things, overall quality testing, attention to detail, how much effort went into design etc. Its not a silver bullet but oh boy does it always show on result, without exception.

[trelane]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_colla... was not 2 months ago.

> Its not a silver bullet but oh boy does it always show on result, without exception.

Permit me to show you an exception!

This watch is USD59: https://www.target.com/p/men-39-s-timex-expedition-scout-wat...

This watch is GBP225: https://mrjoneswatches.com/products/a-perfectly-useless-even...

There are even more extreme examples, e.g. the watch from Richistan.