Archive for August 2010
An experiment, posted on LessWrong.com that led to a further diatribe on rationality and rational thinking traps got me thinking too. Here’s the problem:
Once upon a time, there was an instructor who taught physics students. One day she called them into her class, and showed them a wide, square plate of metal, next to a hot radiator. The students each put their hand on the plate, and found the side next to the radiator cool, and the distant side warm. And the instructor said, Why do you think this happens? Some students guessed convection of air currents, and others guessed strange metals in the plate. They devised many creative explanations, none stooping so low as to say “I don’t know” or “This seems impossible.“
Recently, I was the happy recipient of some very condescending “advice” from the architecture group of a client. The tone, quality and delivery of the information completely overwhelmed the actual message (some of which was actually relevant, and some was off in left field). This pleasant experience reminding me why the term “software architect” has come to be synonymous in some circles with “arrogant jerk who forgot what it’s like to code on a real project”.
