Fri 17 Mar 2006
Life is not an Axiomatic System: Choosing the Least Wrong
Posted by themaninthedoorway under BusinessYou learn something from everyone you work with - or at least you should. I have learnt (by the way when does one use learned and when does one use learnt) a number of things from a number of people but one of the first that really struck me was the maxim of an ex-boss: do the right thing. When I would go to him with a problem and propose a number of potential solutions some of which would create political hurricanes, some of which would not he wouldn’t care about that and just ask what the right things was. Do the right thing. Sure, this doesn’t solve everything and it for sure doesn’t stop you from making mistakes but at the very least you can always live with yourself by the fact of being honest and you are always doing the best to create value for the company you work for. Not taking the path that makes life easiest for you personally.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. You for sure won’t have to spend your time weaving.
But in real life and business even “do the right thing” is not enough to help you through your day because, as Chomsky said, life is not an axiomatic system. What this means is that two things X and NOT(X) can both have equal validity. Two diametrically opposed solutions to a problem may be both equally valid, two solutions which cannot exist in the same theoretical, logical universe can happily co-exist in the physical, real universe.
So sometimes I twist do the right thing into something which should be logically and theoretically equivalent but in the real world sometimes can help to bring a different angle to problem solving. Do the least wrong thing.
It can also be the case that all potential solutions that present themselves are wrong in some vitally important way. The only unsupportable position in business is to take no decision. So if one approaches it as “which is the least wrong” it is at the very least one extra thinking-tool you can use to help make a decision.
As a coda to this piece, every decision one ever takes will be criticised pre, during and post because the majority of decisions and solutions have some element of wrongness about them. And yes, believe it or not, everyone will see all the wrong and you get criticised for it.
What people do not see is the solution space that you had to contend with and the potential solutions that were discarded - after the process all that is left is the decision itself in all of its “wrongness”.
(My first introduction to Chomsky, for anyone who is interested, was Deterring Democracy. Everyone should read Chomsky at least once. Really.)
March 17th, 2006 at 11:49 am
“Learned” is an adjective, as in “the learned professor” with the “-ed” pronounced separately; “learnt” is the past tense of the verb “learn” … I think.
March 17th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Cool - so I may have got it right
March 18th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
I don’t think there is much of a difference between -ed and -t for the past tense version, the two are often interchangeable. But “learnt” is never used in the adjectival sense. Similarly, colourful US constructs such as “I learned him” (meaning I taught him) never use the -t spelling either.
March 18th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
[...] The Man In the Doorway’s question on the usage of learnt versus learned reminded me of one of my favourite books, Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Here are two examples why: [...]
March 19th, 2006 at 11:49 am
[...] That’s a quote from Wernher von Braun, and one of my favourites. This post was, yet again, triggered by one in Accidental Light, about choosing the least wrong. [And yet again, Malc, I should be co-commenting, I know, and I will be, soon. When I install it] [...]