Personal essays
On slow deliberation and false steps
Boo
My first semester of graduate school I struggled with a topology class once we got past the basics.
I’d come to class prepared and take careful notes trying to follow the line of reasoning that the professor was detailing at the board.
He’d show this and that and then he’d say, “Suddenly, we can see that…” and explain an intermediate conclusion we needed in preparation of the grand finale.
After class we would wander back to our offices and talk about the class.
One day I asked a fellow student, “why suddenly?”
She look confused.
I said, “at this point in the proof he said, “Suddenly, we can see that…”
“No,” she laughed, “he said ‘certainly’. Certainly, we can see that…”
And suddenly I felt much better. It had been certain to me but I was struggling to see why it was sudden.
I pictured someone jumping out from behind the lectern shouting “Boo” and then the thing would be true.
Suddenly.
Pairing
I started writing my next book this morning. It features a back story for one of the detectives when they used to work for a Nero Wolfe type of character known as the Agile Detective.
One of the types of Agile programming featured a rule that every bit of code had to be written by two people working together. The practice was known as pair programming.
I had a friend who just hated this.
She was a very good programmer, but she liked to take time and think out different ways of accomplishing a task before beginning to enter code.
Pair programming, at least at her company, rewarded fast answers. A deliberate programmer wasn’t given the time they needed and so the person they were paired with would often push things along.
More code got written, but it might not have been the best code.
It’s what we call in math, a local maxima. It might be higher than all of the points nearby, but way over there is a much higher hill that we won’t climb because in order to go up to the top of it we temporarily have to go down from where we are - and we never go down.
Boldly
The math proofs we learn in school are presented to cleanly and logically.
The scientific facts we’re taught seem to be obvious and inevitable.
But creating this knowledge is a long and slow process that is filled with missteps.
Star Trek may boldly go where no man has gone before - but the audience wants an adventure each week. They aren’t going to wait the years it takes to go from earth to mars.
During the pandemic, scientists offered advice on how to best protect ourselves and contain the outbreak.
Over time they learned more and their advice changed.
I find that comforting but some find it unsettling.
They’d rather be told by a confident man with no scientific training that nothing beats bleach up your backside for eliminating COVID.
Who needs research and studies and careful testing - America wants a quick answer delivered with conviction.
We don’t have the patience to wait for answers that are certainly true.
We want answers that are suddenly true.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 225. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe