Why is D unpopular?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 13:26:10 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> I guess my stance came out as "talking about language adoption 
> is strictly negative, unless you have exceptional arguments", 
> and you felt a need to rebut that. That wasn't quite what I 
> said but thanks for the clarification anyway. I admit that I 
> probably was in the need for that clarification myself.

Why would it be negative?

Ok, so to go deeper into what "design is".

It is perfectly reasonable to claim that we cannot make any 
certain predictions about outcome, so we have to rely on 
hypotheses.

Then we need to consider two types of hypotheses:

1. hypotheses about possible negative effects of the design change
2. hypotheses about possible positive effects of the design change

Then you can evaluate various designs and make trade-offs. You 
don't need to know the exact outcome, but in order to plan ahead 
you benefit from having a good grasp on possible positive and 
negative outcomes. Both in order find the right design and in 
order to plan ahead beyond that.

If a possible positive effect does not happen, the negative 
impact is low.

If we overlook a possible negative impact then he negative impact 
can be quite high.

So, when we design for change it isn't critical that the positive 
outcome did not occur, but it is critical to avoid negative 
outcomes. So yes, enabling more potentially positive outcomes and 
minimizing potentially negative outcomes will over several 
iterations make for a better situation (from a statistical 
perspective).