Reversible and irreversible decisions (2018)

In a perfect world we'd have a kind of quantum uncertainty, where we forked reality into two streams, and maintained two options until one or the other proved a safe passage. Quoting from Digital Vegan;

  "Consider how the UK government let our drinking water reservoirs be
  sold off for property development, believing that advanced JIT (just
  in time) management technology, smart metering and so forth, would
  dispense with them. Then climate change came. Reservoirs are like
  power supply capacitors; they absorb as well as smooth out
  supply. Now in the UK we have housing estates built on flood plains.
  Rivers burst their banks with every downpour. Knocking down
  thousands of peoples' houses to regain reservoir capacity is much
  /harder/ than it was to sell the reservoirs to developers."

Similarly our gushing project toward an "online cashless society" is playing with dangerous forces. It's a net destruction of wealth and order. It won't be cheap or quick to re-open shops, print and distribute cash, install ATMs and money handling facilities once the terrifying brittleness of a wholly digital economy becomes clear. Those imagining "Nothing can possibly go wrong with the all Bitcoin + Amazon society", haven't thought through the reality of what happens when tens of millions of people can't get food even though it's in a warehouse less than 100 miles from their house.

This is not to suggest that the attrocities (at this point anyway) would be comparable, but that history is moving ahead.

Sorry about political angle, but due to my circumstances, I am very angry of what is happening, and I think these things cannot be repeated too many times.

Still, I appreciate this concept and I think it's better to have the mental model than not.

If it turns out to be the wrong direction you can course correct then.

This really helps if not everyone on a team is convinced that it's the right decision: they can commit to it knowing that there will be a chance to change direction pretty soon if it turns out not to work.

The fundamental issue is more just taking the possiblity of error and failure of strategy into account. Hence, having a rollback strategy in place beforehand is wise. This post discusses a few basic recovery strategies plus more complicated ones:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/rolling-back-from-a-mi...

Bezos is likely well aware that the real world is always more complex than two simple choices, but that's too much information for a sales-confidence pitch to shareholders, I imagine.

The culture divide make so many variables moot/invalid, since lifestyle, language and customs may not even associate with any of the variables (one-way/two-way doors for example).

As an individual, its easy to simplify. As someone trying to explain something, its easy to oversimplify, missing any/all of the details, experience and even the accumulated wisdom in basing the decision(s).

Reversible/irreversible is not usually a carrot on a stick. Even with health, detrimental/beneficial usually has more merit than any cost weighted variables (you can never buy your health back).

2=1+1 has worked just fine in traditional science for centuries. The (2) is usually unique though.

All that to say.... This article did nothing for me :)

But often you just have to try a product to find out if it works for you. In that case it can help to think about what risk there is in just buying something that seems ok.

If you can return it easily, or if it doesn't lose much value in using and you can sell it used for 90% of the new price then there's no real downside to just making a quick decision.

Detailed analysis is only really worth it for more 'irreversible' purchases where it's either a big hassle to undo the purchase (buying a house) or there's a large cost (cars lose value quickly).

It's extremely rare for decisions to be as binary as one-way or two-way, but there's always a point on the sliding scale of cost to change later.