Normalization of deviance

Dan Luu · 29 Dec 2015 · danluu.com ↗

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
People reliably skip the practices known to prevent rare catastrophes, and then rationalise the shortcut as the reasonable thing to do.

Their wordsThe data are clear that humans are really bad at taking the time to do things that are well understood to incontrovertibly reduce the risk of rare but catastrophic events.

Interesting
Our reading
Normalization of deviance is well studied in healthcare and aviation and almost never discussed in software, although software organisations do it constantly.

Their wordsIt's well studied in a number of other contexts including healthcare, aviation, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and civil engineering, but we don't see it discussed in the context of software.

Interesting