software engineering; grumble
This thread is about software engineering, but I'm going to start with Communism and teen pregnancy. [1] I'm sporadically in touch with a guy I knew in Scotland in my twenties who's still a dyed-in-the-wool tankie. Whenever anyone talks about "the failure of Communism" his response is, "That wasn't Communism—that was Stalinism." I've had equally disorienting conversations with Catholics about priestly child abuse: "The Church didn't fail, the people did." 1/5
software engineering; grumble
(I could mention libertarians and the free market here, but I'm still occasionally able to pity their delusions.) 2/5
software engineering; grumble
Which brings us to [2] teen pregnancy. People in public health sometimes talk about "abstinence solutions", meaning, "Something that would work if people were completely different than they are." It's a different tactic than "that's Stalinism" but serves the same purpose: to make a thesis unassailable by refusing to allow its failures to be tabled. (Trust me: when a parent says, "He's not a bad kid, he just acts like one," you might as well end the conversation.) 3/5
software engineering; grumble
So let me tell you what I want (what I really, really want). I want a conference session where half a dozen agilistas, formalistas, systems thinkers, and what not stand up and say, "Here's what would convince me that [thing I believe in] doesn't actually work any better in the real world than anything else." I'm not asking for people to recant or demean themselves in a Maoist self-criticism session. I just want to know where the damn goalposts are. 4/5
software engineering; grumble
@gvwilson I think this is a great preface to debating almost any topic. A related approach is if someone is advocating a different way of doing things to have them list some the negative consequences of making the change.
Even changes that are good on balance generally have drawbacks. If one is convinced a change has only positive consequences it is usually because one has not thought carefully enough about it or is allowing oneself to be deceived by ones ideological preferences.
