Re: [Rfcplusplus] Sunk cost + not about us

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 09, 2018 at 06:32:28PM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> This formulation assumes that change does not have a cost.  It does.  I
> agree that not changing has some cost.  However, absent indication that the
> changes will actually address the claimed problem, paying the various direct
> and indirect costs of changing things is not inherently a good thing.

I think this argument would be stronger if we understood what your
estimation of the costs are.  The analysis underpinning the proposal
(in the BoF request), as near as I can tell, is that the costs are the
using up of a few letters (for new series names) plus the cost of
possibly reserving RFC numbers for the alternative series publications
(in case they turn out not to work after 3 or more years), plus the
costs to tooling changes.  Are there other costs you can think of?

Keep in mind, the proposal is for an experiment.  Experiments do
indeed result in some costs, and I think it is entirely reasonable to
ask what those costs really would be.  But I also think we ought to
keep in mind the potential benefit of the experiment, which is to do
an empirical evaluation of whether the long-debated confusion can be
clarified (at least, in this way).

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]