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@ Wilya
2025-06-04 15:39:36
Why Engineers Kill Protocols (The Omniscient Designer Fallacy)
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Most engineers approach protocols like software products, and this fundamental misunderstanding kills more promising technologies than any external competition ever could.
When we criticize SMTP for not being "designed to handle spam from the beginning," we're falling into what I call the omniscient designer fallacy. This assumes protocol creators in the 1980s should have anticipated decades of future threats, economic incentives, and social dynamics that didn't yet exist. Even if they had tried to build the "perfect" anti-spam protocol, spammers would have found new attack vectors, and the system would have evolved anyway.
The deeper issue is treating protocols like controlled products rather than living systems. Products exist in managed environments where you can optimize endlessly. Protocols live in the wild, interacting with thousands of implementations, millions of users, and countless unforeseen circumstances. They're less like engineering projects and more like species released into an ecosystem.
Consider how SMTP actually survived spam through evolutionary pressure. The protocol developed sophisticated immune responses over decades - DNS blacklists, cryptographic signatures, reputation systems - none of which were in the original design. Meanwhile, countless "better designed" email alternatives died because they optimized for elegance instead of adaptability.
The lesson? Protocols that survive aren't the ones designed best, but the ones that evolve best under pressure.