Dnia piątek, 28 listopada 2014 01:07:36 coderman pisze: > On 11/19/14, Andy Isaacson <[email protected]> wrote: > > ... > > Have you heard of the phrase "harm reduction"? You can't solve a > > social/technical problem by insisting that only perfect solutions are > > acceptable. You must provide incremental solutions that can be part of > > a broad based move from the horrible place where we are now, towards a > > more safe future. > > i used to agree with this, and then i realized this is bad advice if > incremental improvements are resulting in less security over time. > > said another way, if you are currently falling behind quickly, by not > moving, then moving ahead at a walk just means you fail less soon than > others. > > everyone ends up in fail, however.
Still, I prefer to land in fail less soon; maybe in the meantime somebody *does* find a perfect solution I can switch to? For the time being it still makes sense to make sure I fail "the least soon" as I can. > > I mean, *you* can do whatever you want, but users are going to ignore > > solutions that don't connect to where they are today. "Incremental > > steps with continuous improvement" is a model for advice that actually > > works in improving outcomes for real populations. "Burn everything to > > the ground and start over" is a model for advice that lets activists > > maintain ideological purity without dirtying their hands with actual > > people's actual problems. > > i think this is only true if the magnitude of broken and incompetent > crushes you into inaction. > > if instead it spurs you to build, for years, on something of a solid > base, then criticism must be deferred until that base is put to the > test. Well, "criticism" maybe, but then again should you be busy building your perfect solution from ground up, instead of criticising other people's temporary solutions today? ;) > of course, my time spent writing rebuttal subtracted from the time > best applied proving or denying in practice, arm chair theory inviting > as it is... Ah, yes. There we are. :) There will always be different approaches to such things. Sometimes it *does* make sense to wait for the perfect solution; sometimes it *does* make sense to use harm reduction techniques. The demarcation line is *not* clear and depends heavily on circumstances. Hence, throwing any incomplete solution out just because it's incomplete, without looking at what a particular threat model is and if maybe, just maybe, it can lower the threat level to people that would be otherwise completely exposed, is disingenuous. -- Pozdr rysiek
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