It would be appropriate if you didn't try to misuse the present crisis to lend undue emotional weight to your argument. This is manipulative.
Further your argument draws a connection but its spurious a sufficient difference in degree is a difference in kind. The way in which we comport ourselves while sick have the potential on net to kill millions of people where as the peril implied by users failing to update windows has never resulted in peril of that magnitude. Further one can reasonably suppose that one can with sufficient care design a system where updates are on by default and we don't create perverse situations which inspire many users to turn them off entirely.
For example one in which applications are updated without disturbing or interrupting the users workflow, where updates aren't effective until the user reboots, where applications are isolated from their underlying environments where users can roll back and pin a particular version if a new version is buggy or undesirable. Where major changes to entire user interfaces are rare and opt in for years.
> It would be appropriate [...] This is manipulative.
Please don't make unfounded accusations and personal attacks based on suppositions. It was just an easy to understand analogy of how your decisions can have consequences beyond yourself, and does the job without any hint of "emotional weight". The rest is in the eye of the beholder.
> have the potential on net to kill millions of people
Talk about manipulative and lending undue emotional weight to your argument. Nothing gives weight to your own words like not following them yourself.
> one can reasonably suppose that one can with sufficient care design a system where updates are on by default and we don't create perverse situations which inspire many users to turn them off entirely.
This supposition didn't fare well in reality because it's easy to suppose but hard to implement. Especially when talking about a very complex system that has to be put in the hands of ~87+% of computer users out there, and work with tens of thousands of combinations of hardware, software and different configurations. And perhaps the most critical aspect is that the perverse incentives are left to the judgement of users with little to no understanding of the system or the wider implications of misusing it. They are more likely to follow terrible advice because the explanation for the good advice is too complicated. This is why the easy to understand analogy was useful.
>perhaps the most critical aspect is that the perverse incentives are left to the judgement of users with little to no understanding of the system or the wider implications of misusing it.
This is true of capitalism and democracy. The worst choice for economics or governance except for all the other choices. I want a system that respects the users judgement not yours. No matter how well meaning you can't adopt the perspective of all users nor do I desire to see the mediocre results of smart people who know better than their users trying.
It's actually not that hard. If you make updates something that silently happens periodically without interrupting the users or making many changes to the UI that the users rely on they will let you update the parts they don't directly touch all you want to secure their systems.
When you want to make major changes make them opt in and test them to ensure they are actually substantially superior. After a while deprecate the old UI. People will tolerate infrequent major changes far better than constant small breaking changes to their workflow.
Again if you don't make updates suck you don't have to coerce people into doing them. If you are figuring out how to coerce users for their own good you are solving the wrong problem.
Further your argument draws a connection but its spurious a sufficient difference in degree is a difference in kind. The way in which we comport ourselves while sick have the potential on net to kill millions of people where as the peril implied by users failing to update windows has never resulted in peril of that magnitude. Further one can reasonably suppose that one can with sufficient care design a system where updates are on by default and we don't create perverse situations which inspire many users to turn them off entirely.
For example one in which applications are updated without disturbing or interrupting the users workflow, where updates aren't effective until the user reboots, where applications are isolated from their underlying environments where users can roll back and pin a particular version if a new version is buggy or undesirable. Where major changes to entire user interfaces are rare and opt in for years.
How many are going to bother disabling updates?