3 ms·

I'm often reminded of the saying by H. L. Mencken "Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human prob

• maccard 5y ago
  > Now, I do agree that 80% of all engineering problems that one comes across in practice are amenable to the kind of problem solving tactic where instead of solving problem X, you instead look for opportunities to solve adjacent problem Y which is of lesser complexity. The problem with these "overcomplicators" is that they see those 80% of problems as the 20% (and in my experience it's more like a 95/5 split). > To give you a bit of context: ... If I gave one of my coworkers (or reports) feedback that they had overcomplicated a solution and their response was to drop they're in the 97th percentile of programmers with a PhD from a top-5 ranked university, I don't thikn that would dissuade me in any way, in fact probably the opposite. It's an ad-hominem defense; defending _you_ rather than the decisions you've made. > With the other 50% of my time ... seek out the toughest engineering problems... where I have 20-somethings who are my bosses tell me that I always overcomplicate things. With all due respect, they might have a point. If everywhere you go smells, maybe it's time to check your shoes.
  • gyulai 5y ago
    > If everywhere you go smells, maybe it's time to check your shoes. ...well it could also be the fundamental attribution error I mentioned earlier. The very way this thread is unfolding reflects my initial point: From the outside it looks the same. Telling which is which really requires looking at the specific situation, and thinking about it very deeply, and resisting reasoning from an ad-hominem basis, resisting fundamental attribution error, risisting superficial analogies, like your shoe-analogy, or "I've been in lots of situations with engineers who overcomplicate things and usually it's because they actually do overcomplicate things, so I'm just going to treat it like it always is the case that the actually do overcomplicate things". Regarding the paragraph about percentiles: I did not write that to suggest that I'm always right, and others are always wrong. I wrote it because I think it's natural that 90th-percentile engineers would seek out 90th-percentile problems to tackle. And it's precisely that point where reasoning from "usually..." becomes invalid reasoning. In fact the seatbelt example is the perfect example, because if you show somebody a seatbelt mechanism, their initial reaction is indeed likely to be "This is overcomplicated. Why not just use a fixed rope?"
    • maccard 5y ago
      > it could also be the fundamental attribution error I mentioned earlier. It absolutely could be, you're right. On the balance of probabilities if it's _consistently_ happening to you, maybe it's not as simple as "I'm smarter than everyone else in the room". > "This is overcomplicated. Why not just use a fixed rope?" The answer to that is clearly demonstrable, and the analogy holds true. If you are an engineer designing a solution to a problem, you should be able to articulate _why_ this solution is necessary, and what problems it solves. If you're consistently being told that it's over engineered, and aren't able to refute that (as you're implying that this is humiliating for you), then maybe the solution is unwarranted.
      • gyulai 5y ago
        Reducing the "overcomplication" problem to a "communication" problem doesn't help, because it suffers from the same shortcoming where these Dunning-Kruger-esque paradoxes are concerned. All too often the pattern is the judge saying or thinking something like this: Since the subject matter is amenable to proof, and since I, the judge, am such a smart fellow that I would certainly be able to follow any proof presented to me with little effort, my reasoning now works as follows: Step 1: I expend little effort when passing judgment. For example, I shall feel free to pass judgment by declaring something to be "overcomplicated" if it comes from a person about whom I hold the opinion that he tends to overcomplicate stuff (fallacy). Step 2: The burden of proof to dissuade me from that judgment then falls on the enginneer. When he presents that proof, I shall then expend only little effort in trying to follow it, and if I can't, then it surely must be due to the fact that, on top of overcomplicating his engineering solutions, this particular engineer is also a bad communicator. Note that on top of piling on one piece of fallacious reasoning on top of another, this pattern now also starts to take on the flavour of special pleading. Step 3: I am then no longer under any professional or moral obligation to listen to pretty much anything that person has to say. And I will not let this stop me from using my influence to prevent this person from having a career in the company where I work.