Post #1991409

2026-04-21 02:56 UTC

@smallcircles @arclight I could spend another 10 minutes and easily type out at least 6 more examples, but I think my point is there. When I left med tech and went back to school, I continued to see those "unintended consequences" and unacknowledged stakeholders just about everywhere, it's like one of those "THEY LIVE" realizations where I'm the one with the magic glasses.

Replies (1)

@arclight@oldbytes.space 2026-04-21 06:00

@johannab @smallcircles "victims" is not a great word but it's clearer than "indirect stakeholders" or some other bloodless term for people don't directly use the system _with agency_ but are otherwise affected by the system's results. I'm thinking of this in an engineering context - what if our safety analysis software doesn't work correctly and the results lead designers or regulators to make bad engineering decisions which lead to bad outcomes for workers and the public. Economically and politically, the misguided austerity policy decisions justified by the flawed Reinhart-Rogoff model (Excel) no doubt killed people in the UK, though to be fair the austerity policy would likely have been instituted regardless of the conclusions of Growth in a Time of Debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt (i.e. starving pensioners was a policy feature, not a bug.). And I don't doubt you could find another 6 examples from med tech before you finished breakfast (bad UIs for pharmacy dispensing have killed people). "unacknowledged stakeholders" is very close to the term I'm looking for, it just has 4-5 more syllables than I want. And yeah, once you start thinking about this group of people subject to software risk, you start seeing them everywhere. Really a "THEY LIVE" turning point in outlook.

Open ##1991410