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Comment by andrewflnr | Hacker News Reader

This is cathartic to read, but I also despair at getting the people who need to hear it to take it seriously.

> But many people want the world to be simple

This is the source of so much insanity in the world, not just with regard to allocating labor. Details matter, but people who plan "timelines" desperately don't want to hear it. They can go through whole careers without being forced out of the cozy illusion that the world is simple. It's hard to get a man to believe something when his salary depends on it not being true, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, etc.

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> Details matter,

You are on the money[1]. People want to estimate work without even telling what is it that needs to be done in the first place.

[1] http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

Knowing what needs to be done is insufficient in programming too. You need to do careful archeology on the code base as well. Yes that code base you work on every day.

knowing what needs to be done is impossible without considering the means at hand.

It's not just wishing for a goal - a three year old can do that - but enabling to go the way there.

But a statistical estimate may be possible indeed.

There's a great book about this called "Seeing Like a State".

On that subject - I have read the original yet but I did enjoy this take https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...

Weirdly I find "legibility" a little ... reductionist.

It's super-easy to identify the problems with e.g. Stalinism or modern China along these lines. The problem is that humanity is constantly failing in far more chaotic ways too, and what a surprise those are more associated with anarchist capitalism or imperialism, but since they don't reduce to a nice formula you get this somewhat smug analysis of human behavior. Where is the "legibility" problem of the US invasion of Vietnam for instance? There is none because the interests (contain China, destabilize the region) were quite clear, and were achieved, despite the US "losing" the war.

(I'm also really sick of the "Gervais Principle" blather so that may be biasing me against the ribbonfarm blog though)

I cannot recommend this book enough.

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong" - H. L. Mencken

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