A boss/friend and I locked horns on pretty much everything. He could see that my designs and efforts were good. But because I couldn't fully explain how I attai

A boss/friend and I locked horns on pretty much everything. He could see that my designs and efforts were good. But because I couldn't fully explain how I attained them, to his satisfaction, my work was somehow invalid. Years later, he grudgingly acknowledged, by way of an olive branch, that my abductive reasoning was also a valid strategy. And that'd he'd just let it me do my thing. (Even more years later, he had recreated one of my products, and wanted me to know, after trying a lot of alternatives, my design proved best.) I was actually grateful for this outcome. My intuition and crazy ideas have been a source of conflict with most other geeks my entire career. I get along great with other types of nerds, like marketing and graphic designers. I don't know if deductive reasoners can get along with abductive. But I strongly believe most efforts benefit from a mixed strategy. Deductives are great maximizers. Abductives are great for busting out of local maximums. Heh. It just now occurs to me we have a common enemy: the inductives. The purveyors of "well actually" pendantry, FUD, and other forms of bureaucratic sabotage. We'd all be happier if inductives stuck to QA/Test.