The longer a decision’s consequences reach, the slower it must be made.

Evidence

Yet irreversible decisions require significantly more careful planning and information gathering and are therefore unavoidably more time intensive than reversible ones. In fact, other things equal, the following holds: the longer the temporal range of a decision is, the longer the period of time required to make it on the basis of a given substantive standard of rationality. This illustrates the paradox of contemporary temporal development: the temporal range of our decisions seems to increase to the same extent that the time resources we need to make them disappear. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 709

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Democratic politics is structurally incapable of matching economic and technological speed. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 676; Deliberate action requires partial but not total foresight of consequences — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 785; Compressed decision time makes financial markets prone to cascading collapse — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1938 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Deliberate action requires partial but not total foresight of consequences #qualifies (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 785
• Compressed decision time makes financial markets prone to cascading collapse #exemplifies (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1938
• Revolutionary moments compress time so individuals’ instant decisions shape history #complicates (0.80)
• Punishment’s severity must aim at future prevention, not past harm #qualifies (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 152