If the only problem is that we've wasted a lot of time, and in the end one company builds one product that changes the world, then maybe it's worth it.

The existence of a positive net result is not sufficient justification for a poor, inefficient, or wasteful process that led to that result.

It is if you're a utilitarian.

I am not a philosophy student, but I think you have that backwards. My last comment was fundamentally a utilitarian one as it is about maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste. You don't see utilitarians walking around talking about "a sufficient level of good for a sufficiently large group of people".

That's incorrect. In your original comment you referred to "a positive net result", which the utilitarian will always prefer by definition. Perhaps you are confusing utility with efficiency?

>which the utilitarian will always prefer by definition

That is the heart of our confusion here. You are comparing it to a neutral state. Yes, a utilitarian would prefer any positive outcome to that. However, I was implying that there was another path that would have resulted in an even more positive result but through inefficiency we were left with a lesser but still positive result. That waste of resources like time and money is equivalent to a waste of utility that a utilitarian would obviously oppose.

> I was implying that there was another path that would have resulted in an even more positive result

Ah, the old "I intended the exact opposite of what I said" ploy.

Why is this sad? It's just like the startup boom we had in tech, and while most flamed out, we were left with many that changed the world (for better or worse).