the gain-maximizing flaw

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>]

My reply to Glenn Bacon:

 >I believe the major hypothesis behind this forum  may be
 >"deeply-flawed."   The Y2K issue has little to do with gain-max.,

It is perhaps too early to make that conclusion, until this earlier
debate about gain-max. and the Y2K is settled. But let us keep that
possibility in mind...

 >beyond the age of punched cards, the cost of memory or storage was
 >an insignificant issue in the propagation of 2-digit year fields.

In large software systems perhaps. But in controllers and embedded
systems, maximizing ROM- and RAM-space remained an important
consideration in the 80s. Even with the PIC microcontrollers of the
90s, the limited memory space available makes space savings a
significant issue, and this can still tempt a programmer to maximize
space by using 2-digit year fields.

 >To argue that Y2K is the result of corporate gain-max. requires that one
 >show that 2-digit year fields were a conscious policy decision by
 >corporate leaders.  I doubt that anyone can find such evidence.

Paul Swann just posted an account of how the Pentagon set the
standards (2-digit year) for DOD projects, and big business had to
follow suit. The DOD wanted more "bang for the buck", and I would
presume that big business conformed because they wanted those DOD
contracts.

 >Gain-max. may have something to do with the rate of remediation once the
 >problem was visible and credible.  But I would argue that denial was the
 >dominant issue.  There is a story that when Clinton was told about the
 >Y2K issue he didn't believe it was significant because no country with
 >great companies like Microsoft and Intel could possibly have such a

But I would guess that when Clinton saw the estimated costs of
remediation, that's when he finally said, "no way!" Externalizing
costs (by postponing them, for example) is one way of maximizing
present gains... Perhaps, denial, as you say, has something to do with
it. But why deny a problem that your experts tell you exists? I
suggest that the motive is to avoid incurring the costs. If it cost
very little to solve the problem, I'd guess that Clinton would have
agreed without thinking.

 >The Y2K management litterature is full of advice on how the CIO can
 >convince the CEO there is a real problem and get the extra funds
 >needed to fix it.  Big time Denial!

You said it yourself: the CEO would not provide the extra funds and
was into big time denial. Why? Obviously, to keep his costs down.

 >Gain-max. is such an intrinsic characteristic of living things
 >(among many other behaviors) that it is impossible to separate it
 >from Y2K.

Now, this is an interesting observation, and I agree with you. Living
things include gain-pursuit among their behaviors. But I will add:
their behavior also includes risk-avoidance. And I will further assert
that risk-avoidance will generally have higher priority over
gain-pursuit among living things. When animals sense both food and
danger, it is quite obvious how they will generally react -- more so
if the animal had a recent meal and is in no risk of dying from
hunger. (I stay away from the max./min. terms because I am not sure if
individual animals have the computational ability to do such things. I
would guess that not even human beings use such computational ability
to the extent that corporations do.)

The alternative I propose is to tilt the balance back in favor of
risk-avoidance (and risk-minimization, for those who care to apply
their computational prowess) in our own rulesets, and not to let the
pure gain-maximizers to rule our lives.

 >But for those who are ideologically committed to flogging
 >multinationals as gain-maximizers, there are probably better horses
 >to ride than Y2K.

It is not a question of flogging multinationals but of stating a
truism that every business and economics student learns by heart, and
which you can either confirm or disprove: are corporations
gain-maximizers or not? I assert that they are gain-maximizers of the
highest degree.

Perhaps you can appreciate the gain-max. vs risk-min. debate better if
I restate it as a debate between efficiency and reliability, which you
must admit is a recurrent debate among programmers/systems designers.
You must have your own stories to tell about how some programmers just
love to write "efficient" routines using all kinds of tricks and
short-cuts. (Alan Greenspan  -- now chair of the Federal Reserve --
apparently was such a programmer, according to the article posted by
Paul Swann.) And you must know how the debate has been generally
settled. In instances where the debate is settled in favor of
efficiency rather than reliability, the result is often a buggy,
unreliable and crash-prone system. The Millennium Bug, of course, is
the most spectacular example.

Roberto Verzola