House of Eratosthenes

I’m running into an old problem: There are these complex problems being thrown at me that demand answers. This is my livelihood. Lately, however, it has become an implicit part of the job to not make people feel stupid, and my efforts avoiding this have met with mixed results. It’s because of the designs, which are about as complicated as the problems they solve. Here and there, there are opportunities for an exception to this — you can solve a complicated problem with a simple solution, you know, it’s possible. But, it’s important to maintain moderation in this. The most spectacular examples of complex problems being solved with simple solutions, have to do with wrecking things.

The solution should be capable. A contested quote from Einstein about the “perfect formula” says, “simple as possible but not simpler.” Good rule.

After several minutes of introspection, I realized an ugly truth: Repeated admonishments about “Don’t make X feel stupid but solve the problem” stir up impulses in me, due to a marriage long-dead. I guess I spoiled myself with long stretches of time spent staying away from people like that, the “don’t want to see anyone doing anything I can’t do” people. That is not to say I’ve been making a point interacting only with people with an I.Q. of 125 or greater. But, I’ve had my filter working. It’s not a “stupid person” thing, it’s a “people who want to put you in a box” thing. Stay away from the shadow-people. Things work much better, for everyone, with a wedge between us. Like Michael and Fredo, “You see our mother, I want to know a day in advance so I won’t be there.” They come in, I go out. Wasted too much of my one life on them already.

Know what it’s like to be married to a woman who launches into a tirade if you use any “big words” — but you have no idea what makes a word big? Or a woman who wants you clean-shaven, because women can’t grow facial hair? Harrison Bergeron knew. I’m not him, and his world is not for me.

Then again, it’s a difficult complaint to entirely dismiss because sometimes, in some situations, it is legitimate. It’s easy to recognize from the outside. If you’re the third party, watching one person approached with a problem, by another, and you’ve already formed the answer in your mind; when you see the designated problem-solver come up with something two or three times as complicated, it’s aggravating. Yes, I completely get it.

But then again, I can envision how a diesel generator works, a thing of simplicity and beauty. Once it’s actually working, it’s no longer a thing of simplicity — wires, cables, hoses everywhere, and every single one of them has a reason for being. Space shuttle rocket engine, ditto. The design is even simpler, the implementation even more complicated. By the time things are actually implemented, if they’re still functional they’re more complicated. That’s just how it is. It is what’s required. Measurement devices have to be connected, systems have to be cooled. Inlets have to be routed so you can poor the good new oil into them.

The problem is how to distinguish the problem-solver from the guy who really is just out to make headaches. How to make sure you’re not that guy. And I came up with an answer, that works, that really IS simple.

If your challenge to me is one of: “Give me a math equation, whose answer is 4, but don’t make me feel stupid” there are lots of ways to answer that. “Two plus two” is the most obvious; “two times two” works as well. “Two to the power of two” has a certain feeling of useless protest about it, and if my final answer is “What is the cube root of 64,” well then we know I’m just being a dick. Right?

But. If your challenge goes the other way: “Tell me what two plus two is, and don’t make me feel stupid” — it is the asker of the question, not its answerer, who is being the dick. Part of the reason we know that to be true is, there’s only one answer. Oh sure, you can criticize the delivery. That’s always safe. We can argue all day long about whether the answer was delivered in such a way as to make you feel stupid…it’ll probably end in a stalemate, at which time you can take the coward’s way out and “win” with some intonation of “Well, my feelings are what really matter, and I’m the one who gets to say what they are.”

But if we don’t want to live like Bergeron, we have to recognize the Handicapper General. She’s all around us these days, isn’t she?

It has to do with needlessness. The criticism that you are needlessly making the other person feel like an idiot, stands, if the solution you have presented is needlessly complex. But who gets to say that this is the case? Cooling the generator requires a lot of valves, pumps and hoses. Are they needed? Should we ask the guy who hasn’t ever built, fixed, or maintained a generator? The people who never seem to get anything done that helps anybody, certainly do want to be asked. “Burn this bitch down!” and so forth.

When Mrs. Freeberg and I catch ourselves committing little sins of momentary financial incompetence, our favorite way of ‘fessing up is “We know we’ve arrived.” We’ve arrived, because I accidentally left a tee shirt in the wrong bag and paid a king’s ransom to have it professionally cleaned and pressed. And she left a $20 bill in a wad of spare $1 bills, and didn’t miss it. Well…we know our society has “arrived,” because when people do help each other, we think it’s a problem, even bigger than the one that just got solved, that the helper exercised a greater share of influence over the situation — even temporarily — than the person who required the help. It is somehow worthy of our dread and our outrage that the guy who was teetering on the edge of the cliff, was momentarily at the mercy of the guy who reached out and pulled him to safety.

This, somehow, creates a second-crisis, that is worthy of our time. A leading contender for the White House is on record, complaining about too many available choices in the deodorant and sneaker markets.

Diana Moon Glampers, call your office.

CS Lewis uses an example of this in the analogy of a drowning man who refuses to be helped by the guy safely tethered to the shore. “You have an unfair advantage!” he gasps with his last breath, ignoring that the unfair advantage is exactly what makes the other man able to help him.

If I’m asking for help from a smarter person, it’s their superior mind that will make such help possible. Insisting that he be a dolt – or that he avoid making me feel like a dolt – simply means that problems don’t get solved.
- nightfly | 08/26/2015 @ 07:42
Ye cats how I love Bernie Sanders. I’m a bit of a history dork, and I’m having great fun trying to identify the oldest, saddest, tiredest trope in Bernie’s catechism. His policy proposals are straight out of 1934, but with this “there are too many consumer choices these days” stuff, he’s back to the Gilded Age.

I’d love to ask him about the Pullman Strike sometime. Watch out for the Pinkertons, Bernie!!
- Severian | 08/26/2015 @ 08:55

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Solve the Problem, but Don’t Make Me Feel StupidWednesday, August 26th, 2015

Solve the Problem, but Don’t Make Me Feel Stupid
Wednesday, August 26th, 2015