DanArmak comments on Rationality Quotes June 2014 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 01 June 2014 08:32PM

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Comment author: johnlawrenceaspden 05 June 2014 09:23:45PM 13 points [-]

He's saying that one does not need to do a perfect job to win. A common failure mode is to spend ages worrying about the details while someone else's good-enough quick hack takes over the world. It's quite a resonant quote for programmers.

C and Unix obliterated their technically superior rivals. There's a whole tradition of worrying about why this happened in the still extant LISP community which was one of the principal losers. Look up 'Worse is Better' if you're interested in the details.

Comment author: DanArmak 06 June 2014 11:14:32AM 4 points [-]

I'm aware of all that. But the idea that perfection is not needed, and that successful things are almost always flawed in some way, seemed too obvious to merit a quote.

But that is just typical mind fallacy on my part: if others feel this is an insight people should be reminded of, I shouldn't argue.