However, to be approached with caution and the trigger-finger ready on the bayesian judo button for when the “Hofstadter’s-Law fallacy” is preparing to kick in. Changing your estimate will not change the reality. A change in estimate will only change your own approach to the problem—if changing the estimate changes the time and resources it takes to complete a project, start asking the right questions.
When I was a kid (think 7 to 12), I’d often be surprised at how awesome I was for understanding how to use the “Law of Bad Guessing” (since, at the time, I did not know of Wikipedia nor of Hofstadter’s Law, but had noticed the pattern it describes), since I would under-estimate every time and resource cost with the knowledge that it would cost more in practice, because I figured that guessing more would only result in even higher costs, unless the mind was somehow physically forced to guess under the real cost no matter what, which I could easily disprove. Turns out I eventually grew past that mentally, of course, once I realized that the reason it actually worked was because of the effect it had on my approach to the problem afterwards.
A very close parallel, indeed.
However, to be approached with caution and the trigger-finger ready on the bayesian judo button for when the “Hofstadter’s-Law fallacy” is preparing to kick in. Changing your estimate will not change the reality. A change in estimate will only change your own approach to the problem—if changing the estimate changes the time and resources it takes to complete a project, start asking the right questions.
When I was a kid (think 7 to 12), I’d often be surprised at how awesome I was for understanding how to use the “Law of Bad Guessing” (since, at the time, I did not know of Wikipedia nor of Hofstadter’s Law, but had noticed the pattern it describes), since I would under-estimate every time and resource cost with the knowledge that it would cost more in practice, because I figured that guessing more would only result in even higher costs, unless the mind was somehow physically forced to guess under the real cost no matter what, which I could easily disprove. Turns out I eventually grew past that mentally, of course, once I realized that the reason it actually worked was because of the effect it had on my approach to the problem afterwards.