{"id":143,"date":"2010-05-31T22:41:27","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T05:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=143"},"modified":"2010-05-31T22:41:27","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T05:41:27","slug":"it-must-be-simple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/it-must-be-simple\/","title":{"rendered":"It must be simple"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of you know that I\u2019m a big fan of the five orders of ignorance<\/a> (link is to my interpretation \u2013 the author\u2019s original paper is here<\/a>). I especially like the concept of \u201cunknown unknowns\u201d those bits of knowledge that are critical \u2013 despite the fact that we didn\u2019t recognize those bits until they fell onto our laps.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been pondering over an interesting fuzzy line between Armour\u2019s second level of ignorance (you know you don\u2019t know something), and his third level of ignorance (you don\u2019t know you don\u2019t know). I\u2019ve noticed that often, when you know nothing about a subject, you perceive it as simple. Then, as you learn more, it seems impossibly difficult; and then, as you master it, it become\u2019s easier to manage (but probably never as simple as you imagined in the first place). The second and third levels of ignorance seem to play with each other as you try to move knowledge into the first level of ignorance (you know what you know)<\/p>\n

An example would probably help here. Many years ago, I knew nothing about recording music, but I wanted to be able to record my own stuff, overdub, mix, edit, etc. Since I had never done it before, I was convinced it was easy, and that anyone with a brain and a halfway working set of ears should be able to do it.Within a few weeks of attempting to pick up this \u201ceasy task\u201d, I realized it was extremely complicated and required a lot of meticulous work (this was pre-digital, so within a few weeks I was fixing timing issues with a razor blade). I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d ever get a handle on it, but eventually I figured enough stuff out for my own purposes, and to this day I still uncover areas of complexity I never imagined.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another great example of this from my list of favorite movies that came out when I was 19 \u2013 Better off Dead<\/a>. There\u2019s a scene where John Cusack\u2019s character is on top of a mountain ready to ski down and his friend gives him this advice:<\/p>\n

\n

Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s exactly the \u201cexpert\u201d advice someone who doesn\u2019t know the subject would give. Steve Martin used to tell a similar joke about skiing \u2013 I don\u2019t remember it exactly, but it went something like this:<\/p>\n

\n

Skiing \u2013 you go to the top of a mountain with slippery things on each foot and go down. Try not to \u2013 that would be a sport!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps a better example for testers is Jerry Weinberg\u2019s Perfect Software<\/a> book. To me, it\u2019s not so much a testing book, but it\u2019s a wonderful<\/u> book to give to people who don\u2019t know anything about testing \u2013 mainly because most people who don\u2019t know about testing often think it\u2019s a simple activity that has something to do with banging on keys or pushing buttons. Once you learn a bit about software testing, you of course realize that it\u2019s far more complex than you ever could imagine. Eventually (if you\u2019re lucky), you fall in love with the challenge and never look back.<\/p>\n

I see at least a few examples of this phenomenon every day. I have lost track of the times I\u2019ve heard people critiquing the efforts to plug the oil leak in the Gulf and offering their own advice. However, the fact that they haven\u2019t been able to solve it, and have tried to fix it several ways must mean it\u2019s probably a more complex problem than most of us understand (or that the efforts are run by aliens from the planet Stupid).<\/p>\n

I suppose the moral of all this is that nothing is as simple as it appears \u2013 especially with knowledge acquisition. Keep it in mind the next time you think<\/em> you know something \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of you know that I\u2019m a big fan of the five orders of ignorance (link is to my interpretation \u2013 the author\u2019s original paper is here). I especially like the concept of \u201cunknown unknowns\u201d those bits of knowledge that are critical \u2013 despite the fact that we didn\u2019t recognize those bits until they fell…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}