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Comment by lnenad

21 hours ago

Why can't innovation bring better stability?

Innovation is change, and change is the opposite of stability.

Innovation can reduce pain though, if the current pain is strong enough. A stable stream of failures in production can be the kind of "stability" you want to disrupt.

  • Being able navigate change can provide stability in the long term though, at least as opposed to being resistant to change.

    • Yes, all stability in real life is metastability, it needs a constant effort to maintain. A worthy innovation can lower this effort, or lower the risk of a catastrophic failure.

      A complete stability is death.

  • What are we talking about? Philosophically yes. Factually, no. In the context of a system innovation could be switching from one form that renders in 1 second to another that renders in 50ms. Stability isn't part of that equation.

    • Is this switching risk-free? Consider all these ancient computer devices that run high-stakes equipment for years and decades without change. An RPi could replace an ancient PDP-11, cost a fraction, consume a fraction of energy, be faster, etc. But it also may introduce new and unknown failure modes.

The important thing is to raise the question and have the discussion. By asking the question, you're not precluding the experiment.