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This makes me realize I’ve been misinterpreting bell the cat references my whole life. I thought it was about team work.

My mother told me a version that had the mice building some rube goldberg contraption to get the bell on the cat. It’s a very different lesson from what’s described here. I wonder if she got her version from someone else or if it was her addition to avoid teaching me a cynical lesson.

Thanks for the reference. Never heard about the "belling the cat" concept before (I am not european/american). However me and another colleague at work always joke/inquiry (sarcastically?) about "who is going to do it" whenever the "team" (in retros, planning, etc) brings up some idea that it would be very nice to execute.

This reference will be very useful to articulate what so far it's been sarcastic comments at best.

Amusingly the part of the story that refers to the partially solved problem is also on its own just as evergreen.

"All you have to do is" is such a common phrase online. "why didn't they just". If one is a solo builder, yes, by all means. But why didn't the SFMTA "just build side bike lanes instead of center running bike lanes in the first place?"

Betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge of how democracies make decisions: it is the center of gravity of an object with varying mass distribution.

Interesting, this is a phrase I’ve never heard before. But this is a concept I’ve had to articulate quite a number of times in recent years, as it has been quite pertinent as of late. This’ll be useful shorthand.

ooooh, so that's what https://www.bellingcat.com/ is called this way!

Reminds me of us europeans expecting Ukraine men to defend us from Russia.

Which they have kind of been doing for years now, showing us what a big fat joke Russia is.

'Little School Mouse' episode from Tom & Jerry contains an incident of belling the cat: https://tomandjerry.fandom.com/wiki/Little_School_Mouse

I love this. But it should also be said that if a mouse is in the process of putting the bell on the cat, other mice should shut up and get out of the way.

In my experience, the same people that have ideas similar to belling the cat, are the same people that are major critics and with opinions about how something can't be done even though someone is actively in the process of doing it.

I guess the moral is about how ideas and opinions (positive or negative) are empty when one is unwilling to be involved in their implementation.

I'm surprised that medieval Europeans apparently put bells on cats sometimes. Did they care about the lives of small fluffy animals?

It's also a tragedy of the (anti-)commons. The mice should coordinate, tax themselves fairly and hire a ninja to put the bell on the cat.

Love it. It's Homer Simpson's "Can't Someone Else Do It?" without the self-awareness.

Can anyone recommend an illustrated translation of La Fontaine's Fables for children?

I heard the story, when I was a kid, but didn't realize that it was what was meant, when used in popular culture. I always thought that it meant establishing a warning threshold for undesirable outcomes.

I enjoyed this reference from the Wikipedia article[0]. Sort of the flip side of the Abilene Paradox[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

"Belling the Cat" (2022), 20 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466207

> a useful question to ask when you find yourself in a situation where a group has decided on something but nobody is acting

oy, clicked thinking was Bell Inequality meets Schrondinger's cat post