I don't think it's absurd at all. I think it is a practical principle that shows up all the time in collective action problems. For example, suppose hypothetically there were a bunch of business owners who operated under an authoritarian government which they believed was bad for business, but felt obliged to publicly support it anyways because opposing it could lead to retaliation, thus increasing its ability to stay in power.
That’s a completely different situation though. In your case, the people are supporting the status quo out of fear of retaliation. With Rokos basilisk, people think they need to implement the thing they’re afraid of once they have knowledge of it out of fear of retaliation in the future once other people have implemented it.
There was a time that printed checks had to use special laser toner called MICR Toner that was magnetic so the magneto readers could machine read the check bottoms routing and account numbers, but that went away when the Fed just ran it all as ACH/ electronically and optically scanned checks around the time mobile deposit and well after OCR became a thing. Last I checked the rule was still present in the statues.
CGP Grey, a youtube channel, has a video on some of the problems of the postal codes and addresses from earlier this year that I learned about alternates to my familiar US based system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5oDtVAYzk
That's a crime the Valley Relics Museum couldn't get the Spaceship. It has done a really great job saving what can be saved of Los Angeles San Fernando Valley history. If you're ever near the Van Nuys airport check it out.
Fry's was a happy place for me. Memories of their old Terminal based stockkeeping system (AS400? AIX? I heard rumors the owner wrote it themselves). The Burbank Scifi theme, the Manhattan Beach polynesian theme, the Woodland Hills Alice in Wonderland Theme. Even the old sacramento unthemed version and the newer train themed one. The memories of building my own computers for several iterations and almost always getting my parts there, shopping first with my Dad then later a relaxing walk on my own. The haunted look of female partners dragged there. The ecclectic selection. It was a okay substitute for an old style electronics store like Electronic City, but had so much other interesting things. So many interesting things lost in LA. DAK2000, TRI-ESS Sciences, OPAMP Books. ALL Electronics surplus.
"he’d forgotten to write the bootstrap loader"
He didn't load the whole program from the switches on the face, just the bootstrap that would let them feed the paper tape through the teletype/paper tape reader that was common at the time. It would take a very very long time to load the whole program by hand. See this video of a demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxU_3dEJ2nM
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