This has nothing to do with cycling - it's just an observation on my work environment. I don't know if this phenomenon is related solely to government work, or if it occurs everywhere.
There is a philosophical method called Reductio ad absurdum which is used to demonstrate that a statement is incorrect. It involves showing that the logical conclusions of the statement are absurd or undesirable in some way. For example, we might see the following conversation in a design committee for accounting software.
User: I'd like to add a feature that allows us to attach video files to purchase orders.
Dev: Why?
User: It might be useful for something.
Dev: It will cost 100 hours of programming, 100 hours of testing, consume 50% of our network capacity, and require us to purchase $10,000 of extra disc space.
User: Oh, maybe we don't need that then.
Unfortunately, not everyone has heard of this concept so I am regularly witness to conversations like the following.
User: I'd like to add a feature that allows us to attach video files to purchase orders.
Dev: Why?
User: It might be useful for something.
Dev: It will cost 100 hours of programming, 100 hours of testing, consume 50% of our network capacity, and require us to purchase $10,000 of extra disc space.
User: OK according to my notes the backup system will take 100 hours of programming and testing. We don't really need backups do we?
Dev: (sarcastic) Not until the system crashes.
User: Great. And the email system uses 50% of our network traffic, right? So why can't we just pass notes around like we used to?
Dev: (sarcastic again) I can't believe I didn't think of that.
User: And we can fire a teacher's assistant to save the money for the disk space. See - we can do anything we set our minds to.
Dev: I give up.
And that's how decisions are made in government.
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