I do not believe the "good, fast, cheap: choose two" maxim is primarily devious misinformation spread by the slow.
- I do not believe the "good, fast, cheap: choose two[aob]" maxim is primarily devious misinformation spread by the slow.
- Or rather, sometimes it is spread by people making excuses in their particular domain, but the tradeoff is real, a fundamental, inescapable phenomena.
- Some slow people do over-apply the maxim to their domain, but "people are slow" does not explain away all, or even most, instances of the maxim.
- The maxim only applies if you are on the efficient frontier to actually activate the tradeoff.
- It is very, very easy to not be anywhere near the efficient frontier.
- It is a convenient excuse for people who have not rigorously ground-truthed how close they are to the efficient frontier to claim the maxim as a hand wave.
- (Although you could frame the additional work to prove you are at the efficient frontier as consuming effort in the time dimension, thus fitting into the maxim, and choosing the good/cheap quadrant.)
- Another source of confusion: you can "solve" the tradeoff by moving in a fourth dimension.
- If you are in a position of unquestioned power in a given domain, you can simply change the requirements.
- The changed or loosened requirements might permit a solution that previously was not permitted.
- (You could frame this as choosing a point closer to the fast/cheap and relaxing 'good' if you wanted, staying within the fundamental tradeoff.)
- If you were in a position of unquestioned power to change the requirements, you might not even realize you were doing it.
- "Why doesn't everyone simply boldly change the requirements like I do?"
- Often there's precisely one person in a context who is actually permitted to do that.[aoc]