Comment on Incident
iii@mander.xyz 5 days agoIt’s odd to be opposed to standards.
The baseline more than often becomes the goal, that’s my issue. Oh so many people just go through the motions devoid of thinking and intent :)
Good news is it sounds like we both got exactly what we want!
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I think the difference might be that you’re thinking of standards that say “if you do A and B and C then you’re a good ___”. Happens with prescriptive education standards that are tied tightly with budget.
I’m thinking of standards like “failure to A or B or C, or doing X or Y or Z makes you an unacceptable ___”. It’s what you see in restaurants and hospital hygiene standards. Any restaurant “cleaning to the test” and only going down the food safety list and correcting any issue is both the type that would just be filthy without those standards, and also would end up serving safe food. Same for doctors and hand washing. We would rather all doctors be deeply committed to hygiene, but we have real world data that mandating hygiene minimums and doing things to enforce them has measurable increases in patient well-being. Same for building safety standards and such.
In a system with the standard, those people are providing better care than they would be without them.
iii@mander.xyz 5 days ago
I’ve seen goodhart’s law in effect too often. In practice the latter, “failure to A or B or C, …” always turns into the first, “just do A, B and C”. Devoid of thinking why A, B and C need to happen. The same thinking that would lead people to also do E and F, and realize that sometimes A is not necessary.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one ;)