taryneast comments on Bias in capital project decision making - Less Wrong

40 Post author: jsalvatier 26 May 2011 06:06PM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 26 May 2011 10:13:25PM 3 points [-]

I'd also add: 5) engineers often totally forget about the black swans (or unknown unknowns) - especially obscure edge-cases that require special handling.

I'm not sure that's what is meant by a black swan, but in any case, this would be a factor only if managers more accurately predict the impact of these events. (If it's a case of known-but-unusual things happening in part of the problemspace, that's an issue of defining the problem appropriately for the engineers, and can be corrected before the solution is implemented without a higher time-discount or margin of safety.)

Comment author: taryneast 28 May 2011 09:01:09AM 1 point [-]

Yes, perhaps that should instead read:

5) engineers often totally forget about the unknown unknowns or even black swans.