> Delegation flows downward from an authority.

Yes, exactly. You originally described delegation as flowing upward toward authority (so the opposite) when you said, "That is called delegation of responsibility. If you are not qualified to make a certain professional decision or if such a decision exceeds your delegated responsibility then you need to bring somebody else in, possibly a supervisor."

> In my experience that is a commonly believed blanket assumption that rarely occurs in practice. Risks tend to increase over time in the absence of controls enforcement.

Agree to disagree then. I've found that this occurs frequently in practice. I've already given examples.

> I am not discounting the value of education, but you would never hire a medical doctor who has never touched a scalpel or a trial lawyer who has never performed at trial.

In typical hospital settings, patients are assigned to doctors, and they can have little experience; it's called residency. Secondly, are you saying you'd rather work with a doctor with no education than one with no experience? There is a reason that doctors and attorneys with little experience are allowed to practice, but doctors and attorneys with little education are not.

This does not even include the fact that doctors and attorneys are _constantly_ reading and researching from studies (for diseases and treatments) and case law (for precedents), respectively, for which they have little to no experience.

> This is a logical fallacy called reaffirming the consequent.

No, it's not. What I said has nothing to do with reaffirming the consequent. I don't even know how to respond to this non-sequitur.

> You cannot know if a decision will be more well informed by waiting unless you have waited and reflected upon that delayed decision.

Yes I can, because I'm constantly learning. At any given point in time, I have more information than I did at any prior point in time. So, everything is always more informed the longer I wait. How much more well informed, or how relevant the additional information varies.

> This is a reckless line of thinking since a given risk profile with change during that period of waiting regardless of whether the assertion holds true.

Reckless means with a lack of caution or consideration for consequences. My original response concluded with, "The hard part about making decisions often isn't just the decision itself, but also in understanding the risks and trade-offs of making a potentially wrong decision now, versus making a better informed decision at a later time, and deciding which is the better approach for any given decision that needs to be made."

I would argue your advice is more reckless, since it's advocating less critical thought on a per-decision basis by prescribing a one-size-fits-all methodology for decision making in your original statement that, "It is better to make a wrong decision early than to put that decision off to a future time."

> Assuming risks are an unchanging constant and that the only thing that changes is the information you receive and also assuming there is never cost associated with a delay then yes it would make sense to procrastinate on many decisions, as much as possible, in the hope you will become supremely well informed, but this is extremely unrealistic.

Whether risks are constant or variable doesn't change whether or not a decision should be made quickly or delayed, so I'm not sure what you're saying here. Constant high risks could mean a quick decision is better, while constant low risks could mean a delayed decision is better. Likewise increasing risk could mean a quick decision is better, while decreasing risk could mean a delayed decision is better. Either scenario could go either way, which is exactly why my original point was that you should evaluate on a per-decision basis which is actually better, instead of following a dogma that one is always better than the other.

I also already gave examples where delayed decisions made sense, and they did not involve any of the assumptions you claim to be requirements for a delayed decision to make sense. There doesn't need to be no cost, there can be little cost. You don't need to be supremely well informed, you can just be better informed.

Yes, your reductio ad absurdum argument (speaking of logical fallacies) would be extremely unrealistic as you pointed out. Thankfully, none of those things are necessary for a delayed decision to potentially be better than a quick decision.

> Its a matter of making better decisions and reducing risk over time. Its not about universal truths. That's what religion is for.

The one-size-fits-all prescription to decision making in this original statement is the universal truth I was objecting to:

> It is better to make a wrong decision early than to put that decision off to a future time.

I was pointing out that this isn't always true (i.e. not a universal truth).