# The failure of good decisions

> Half-formed.

- Canonical (HTML): https://kaguc.com/notes/sum-of-good-decisions/
- Date: 2026-05-28


A pattern I keep seeing but haven't pinned: people make good decisions, each
individually defensible, and the *sum* is bad. Worse than that — the sum is
what you would have specifically tried to avoid if you'd described it up front.

Possible names: "local optimization," "constraint blindness." Neither fits.
Local optimization has a global frame implied; this is a thing that happens
*because nobody is keeping the global frame*.

Coming back to this.