Continuing from previous item....
The debt vs saving theme is also visible in Quora discussions about COBOL vs Java, C#, Haskell, Go, and all the other modern shit.

Over and over the tech-monsters slam COBOL as "technical debt" or "sunk cost fallacy". They see an UNBROKEN MACHINE as a debt that continues to cost you money.

Wrong. An old machine or an old set of designs or an old bank of code or an old set of skills has been tested and tried and revised and debugged by EXPERIENCE. It is an ASSET, not a debt. If you've kept up the maintenance, the cost is minimal and the return is steady.

Constant change is the worst kind of debt. Betting your life on the latest THEORY may pay off for you once in a while, but it will always pay off for the casino that rigs the game. IPOs rely on the gambler mentality, sucking the skills of programmers and designers without any ACTUAL PAY, keeping them working 24/7 in permanent anticipation of the BIG PAYOFF in stock options when the house finally loses.

The house never loses.

Now the same paradigm has been applied to medicine and public health. Medicine is an old machine, debugged by 2000 years of experience. Public health is an old set of code, debugged by 200 years of experience. The "virus" IPO throws all the experience away in mad pursuit of a THEORY that runs perfectly CONTRARY to all the experience and logic and science of 2000 years. Absolutely everything we're doing is the precise opposite of what WORKS.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES. THEORY KILLS.

= = = = =

Footnote: Sunk cost can be a fallacy. If you've been pouring your effort into a vain hope, trying to beat the house or trying to become popular and attractive and rich when you weren't born that way, you tend to keep doing it based on occasional ephemeral positive indications. The house loves to provide those occasional meaningless wins. Sunk cost is NOT a fallacy when you're putting effort toward a goal that agrees with Nature, a goal that can be achieved.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 10:27 PM