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I ran across a slightly more polemical phrasing of this principle once, while googling for something unrelated. I've long kept it in a file on my work desktop a

I ran across a slightly more polemical phrasing of this principle once, while googling for something unrelated. I've long kept it in a file on my work desktop as a sort of reminder to myself: "There are often very valid (and even necessary) reasons for why certain things are done in certain ways; these reasons often become clear to us only after we have more deeply investigated into the full details of how things work, whereas our first, less than fully informed reaction may be to regard them as silly, or to attribute them to the wrong cause or agent, or to entirely misunderstand them." (John H Meyers)

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
This statement worries me. It's equivalent to small-c conservatism and sounds suspiciously like "You don't know enough to have an opinion" - which is perfectly fine when it's reality-based, but can also be an easy excuse for enforcing groupthink when it's not. There's also the implication that alternatives have already been tried. But what if they haven't? How are you supposed to tell? Clearly you can't, unless the alternatives have been documented historically. If there's no documentation you're firmly in the land of convention, tradition, and opinion - not effectiveness. I'd prefer a model that assumes running a start-up is like running an experiment on a market. You probe the market with a complete package of technology, marketing, networking, and funding. Then you assess the results. And then - the hard part - you try to work out which parts of the package aren't working, and design a new experiment. You absolute should examine competing models for validity, and you absolutely shouldn't assume they're wrong because you're just that awesome. But assuming they're a better market fit without reality-testing and evidence makes as little sense as assuming they're bad at what they're doing. If that were true, there would be no room to innovate at all.
- _petronius 11y ago
  I didn't think about it that way -- valid criticism, and one that is strongly apparent when presented without context. In context (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.apps/uWq5nUOa-1c/m1jE8315SSAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.apps/uWq5nUOa-1...) it was more about someone coming to a big software system and going "ooh, this decision is stupid" without having done that reality-testing themselves. So I interpret it more as a "don't make snap judgements, analyse the situation carefully" than anything else.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

This statement worries me. It's equivalent to small-c conservatism and sounds suspiciously like "You don't know enough to have an opinion" - which is perfectly fine when it's reality-based, but can also be an easy excuse for enforcing groupthink when it's not. There's also the implication that alternatives have already been tried. But what if they haven't? How are you supposed to tell? Clearly you can't, unless the alternatives have been documented historically. If there's no documentation you're firmly in the land of convention, tradition, and opinion - not effectiveness. I'd prefer a model that assumes running a start-up is like running an experiment on a market. You probe the market with a complete package of technology, marketing, networking, and funding. Then you assess the results. And then - the hard part - you try to work out which parts of the package aren't working, and design a new experiment. You absolute should examine competing models for validity, and you absolutely shouldn't assume they're wrong because you're just that awesome. But assuming they're a better market fit without reality-testing and evidence makes as little sense as assuming they're bad at what they're doing. If that were true, there would be no room to innovate at all.

_petronius 11y ago
I didn't think about it that way -- valid criticism, and one that is strongly apparent when presented without context. In context (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.apps/uWq5nUOa-1c/m1jE8315SSAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.apps/uWq5nUOa-1...) it was more about someone coming to a big software system and going "ooh, this decision is stupid" without having done that reality-testing themselves. So I interpret it more as a "don't make snap judgements, analyse the situation carefully" than anything else.