This is all true, but sometimes people assume the opposite:
“Rules which are not-concise must be clear and comprehensive”.
This is trivially false, but rules can often end up falling into this pit by keeping on adding new rules to handle unexpected edge cases. But each new rule creates further edge cases which have to be handled until the whole system becomes so complicated that nobody sure what’s allowed or isn’t and you call the work done.
Hence even in areas where comprehensiveness is important, like the tax code, it can be valuable to push for simplification. Because if verbosity isn’t actually buying the comprehensiveness or clarity you need, might as well at least be concise.
Yeah, it’s easy to not be on the pareto frontier. Sometimes you can just make things better, and most people aren’t going to argue much against doing that. They might argue a little, because change is a cost. A few people will argue a lot, because they have some unusual benefit. If lots of people argue a lot, that suggests a tradeoff is happening.
My observation is that some people do not prioritize one of the three corners of this triangle, and are confused when others argue about tradeoffs they don’t see as important.
Well, or as is often the case, the people arguing against changes are intentionally exploiting loopholes and don’t want their valuable loopholes removed.
Yep, in what’s possibly an excess of charity/politeness I sure was glossing “exploiting loopholes and don’t want their valuable loopholes removed” as one example of where someone was having an unusual benefit.
This is all true, but sometimes people assume the opposite:
“Rules which are not-concise must be clear and comprehensive”.
This is trivially false, but rules can often end up falling into this pit by keeping on adding new rules to handle unexpected edge cases. But each new rule creates further edge cases which have to be handled until the whole system becomes so complicated that nobody sure what’s allowed or isn’t and you call the work done.
Hence even in areas where comprehensiveness is important, like the tax code, it can be valuable to push for simplification. Because if verbosity isn’t actually buying the comprehensiveness or clarity you need, might as well at least be concise.
Yeah, it’s easy to not be on the pareto frontier. Sometimes you can just make things better, and most people aren’t going to argue much against doing that. They might argue a little, because change is a cost. A few people will argue a lot, because they have some unusual benefit. If lots of people argue a lot, that suggests a tradeoff is happening.
My observation is that some people do not prioritize one of the three corners of this triangle, and are confused when others argue about tradeoffs they don’t see as important.
Well, or as is often the case, the people arguing against changes are intentionally exploiting loopholes and don’t want their valuable loopholes removed.
Yep, in what’s possibly an excess of charity/politeness I sure was glossing “exploiting loopholes and don’t want their valuable loopholes removed” as one example of where someone was having an unusual benefit.