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Another interesting thing I see is how people will refuse to learn history thinking it will harm their creativity[0]. The problem with these types of interpret

Another interesting thing I see is how people will refuse to learn history thinking it will harm their creativity[0]. The problem with these types of interpretations is that it's fundamentally authoritarian. Where research itself is fundamentally anti-authoritarian. To elaborate: trust but verify. You trust the results of others, but you replicate and verify. You dig deep and get to the depth (progressive knowledge necessitates higher orders of complexity). If you do not challenge or question results then yes, I'd agree, knowledge harms. But if you're willing to say "okay, it worked in that exact setting, but what about this change?" then there is no problem[1]. In that setting, more reading helps. I just find these mindsets baffling... Aren't we trying to understand things? You can really only brute force new and better things if you are unable to understand. We can make so much more impact and work so much faster when we let understanding drive as much as outcome. [0] https://bsky.app/profile/chrisoffner3d.bsky.social/post/3liylam2c7c2o https://bsky.app/profile/chrisoffner3d.bsky.social/post/3liy... [1] Other than Reviewer #2

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> Aren't we trying to understand things? Unfortunately, for most of us, no. We are trying to deliver business units to increase shareholder value
- godelski 1y ago
  I think you should have continued reading from where you quoted. >> Aren't we trying to understand things? ***You can really only brute force new and better things if you are unable to understand. We can make so much more impact and work so much faster when we let understanding drive as much as outcome.*** I'm arguing that if you want to "deliver business units to increase shareholder value" that this is well aligned with "trying to understand things." Think about it this way: If you understand things: You can directly address shareholder concerns and adapt readily to market demands. You do not have to search, you already understand the solution space. If you do not understand things: You cannot directly address shareholder concerns and must search over the solution space to meet market demands. Which is more efficient? It is hard to argue that search through an unknown solution space is easier than path optimization over a known solution space. Obviously this is the highly idealized case, but this is why I'm arguing that these are aligned. If you're in the latter situation you advantage yourself by trying to get to the former. Otherwise you are just blindly searching. In that case technical debt becomes inevitable and significantly compounds unless you get lucky. It becomes extremely difficult to pivot as the environment naturally changes around you. You are only advantaged by understanding, never harmed. Until we realize this we're going to continue to be extremely wasteful, resulting is significantly lower returns for shareholders or any measure of value.

bluefirebrand 1y ago

> Aren't we trying to understand things? Unfortunately, for most of us, no. We are trying to deliver business units to increase shareholder value

godelski 1y ago
I think you should have continued reading from where you quoted. >> Aren't we trying to understand things? ***You can really only brute force new and better things if you are unable to understand. We can make so much more impact and work so much faster when we let understanding drive as much as outcome.*** I'm arguing that if you want to "deliver business units to increase shareholder value" that this is well aligned with "trying to understand things." Think about it this way: If you understand things: You can directly address shareholder concerns and adapt readily to market demands. You do not have to search, you already understand the solution space. If you do not understand things: You cannot directly address shareholder concerns and must search over the solution space to meet market demands. Which is more efficient? It is hard to argue that search through an unknown solution space is easier than path optimization over a known solution space. Obviously this is the highly idealized case, but this is why I'm arguing that these are aligned. If you're in the latter situation you advantage yourself by trying to get to the former. Otherwise you are just blindly searching. In that case technical debt becomes inevitable and significantly compounds unless you get lucky. It becomes extremely difficult to pivot as the environment naturally changes around you. You are only advantaged by understanding, never harmed. Until we realize this we're going to continue to be extremely wasteful, resulting is significantly lower returns for shareholders or any measure of value.