Term for infinitely expanding problems [duplicate]
The scenario: I have a problem Z that I’m tasked with solving by my boss. However, before I can complete Z, I must first finish tasks Y and X. However, X depends on tasks W, V, U, and T. And so on, ad infinitum.
There is a term in either the field of computer science or just in English in general that describes this situation and I, for the life of me, cannot remember it. Any help?
Solution 1:
What do you think about you situation suffering from "Spaghetti Dependencies". I don't think it is a commonly used term (a brief search only finds this: http://www.3dfa.com/spaghetti_limit.html), but I assume most people in software development would know exactly what you mean.
Of course it's a play on "spaghetti code" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_code
I'm assuming "poorly scoped" is not the right description to tell your boss. :-)
Solution 2:
As suggested by @deadrat in Comment 1 on your question, infinite regress captures perfectly the situation you describe in your question.
Wikipedia:
An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P1 requires the support of proposition P2, the truth of proposition P2 requires the support of proposition P3, ... , and the truth of proposition Pn−1 requires the support of proposition Pn and n approaches infinity.
Compare your scenario:
"I have a problem Z that I’m tasked with solving by my boss. However, before I can complete Z, I must first finish tasks Y and X. However, X depends on tasks W, V, U, and T. And so on, ad infinitum."
There is an obvious mapping between the truth of Pn and your having to complete an ever expanding list of pre-tasks before you can complete Task n. The underlying concept in the two cases is the same.
Solution 3:
Consider a Sisyphean problem, in allusion to the mythical character Sisyphus, who has to roll a boulder up a hill again and again for all eternity, with the boulder always escaping his clutches right before he reaches the top.
From Wiktionary:
Sisyphean (not comparable)
Incessant or incessantly recurring, but futile.
2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.
Sisyphean labors
Solution 4:
You could call this a Russian doll problem.
In a Russian nesting doll toy, as you are handling a beautiful painted wooden doll, you discover that the head and shoulders part of the doll can come off, like lifting a lid off a round box. As you lift the lid, you discover an identical, slightly smaller doll nested inside the first. But the second doll also comes apart! And so on.
If you want to convey infinite nesting, you could add a modifier, e.g. infinite, interminably or never-ending.
Here is a stackexchange meta reference to this description, applied to the problem of ever-expanding questions: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188625/etiquette-for-russian-doll-questions
