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> 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 w
by 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 agoReducing 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.