

Stupidity versus Malice The often neglected stupidity problem. - themanual
http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/stupidity-versus-malice/

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bsaunder
The examples given seem more like inattentiveness than stupidity. Which makes
sense. Attention to every detail requires effort (a lot of effort). Sometimes
one person may not have all of the resources required to pay enough attention
to every detail. The ones you pay attention to (e.g. aircraft maintenance)
account for fewer problems.

Throughout my programming career, I've noticed a strong correlation of bugs
with code that was given less attention (it was deemed to be an easier problem
to solve, or compartmentalized and solved later).

I don't think it's fair to claim people were stupid just because a detail was
overlooked. Perhaps they could have allocated their attention differently, but
without knowing all of the trade offs it's hard to say they made a bad choice.

I think that people have a finite amount of "attention" that they can devote
to things during a day. Furthermore spending attention on a task seems to
consume energy. It's reasonable to think that occasionally some items get less
attention than they should.

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teeja
Agreed ... too often the stupidity is coming from the organization rather than
its employees. Earlier today I read about a VA data HD with 10 million records
being sent for repair unencrypted.
[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/probe-targets-
archi...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/probe-targets-archives-
handling-of-data-on-70-million-vets/)

As with the UK ($2 billion) 'mistake' sent unencrypted and unregistered, the
_institution_ is dumb, not its 'component parts'.

