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Shouldn't it be the cult of the single root cause? Most problems seem to have several contributing factors. You can almost randomly pick one factor, improve it,
by maxxxxx 8y ago
Shouldn't it be the cult of the single root cause? Most problems seem to have several contributing factors. You can almost randomly pick one factor, improve it, and the whole situation will get better.
You see this a lot in public debate like education or health care. Instead of fixing one of the many problems a lot of time and energy is wasted on finding THE root cause that will fix everything.
- Moto7451 8y agoThis was what came to my mind as well. The fire strawman presented exemplifies this. Finding the root cause is simply a mental model. Discovering that there are three and picking the best one to fix (assuming you’re limited by time/money/complicity/etc or it’s undesirable to fix others) is 100% ok. The existence of instances of multiple root causes does not really say anything negative about Root Cause Analysis. In cases where you can’t discover the root cause (I.e. a plane that explodes and destroys the root cause) you simply have to go as deep as is reasonable and work from there. If someone is unwilling to be reasonable and accept a number of root causes between M-N then the issue is with them, not Root Cause Analysis.
- BaronSamedi 8y agoIn my view, what we see in public debate on these issues, and indeed most political issues, is a sole focus on the symptoms of the problem and never an analysis of the factors causing these symptoms. Adding to the dysfunction, no analysis of potential second-order effects of the symptom-treating solutions is ever done.