Thursday, May 15, 2008

A simplified understanding can stop you from striving for a better one

Quick sketching...

It’s easy to be falsely led into thinking that your current understanding of a problem can’t be improved. That's dangerous, because simplified understandings tend to lead to inappropriate solutions.

You can think it can't be improved, if you expect that, should there exist a way for it to be improved, you could personally see

1) how it was possible for a better understanding to exist
2) what it would look like
3) how it would help you better address the problem

It seems to be just how our brains work that,
If we can’t see these things, we tend to think the thing mustn't exist.

But the problem is, if you do only have a simplified understanding of the problem, then this fact itself can stop you from seeing those things. If you could see those things then you wouldn’t have the simplified understanding.

Just becuase you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Unless you understand why you understand the problem fully, then you always have to be open to the idea that it's useful to learn more about the problem, and that doing so may radically change your idea of how best to address it.

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