The "one pair of glasses" theory

I've noticed this phenomenon in two friends, one who went to law school and the other to business school. I've always bounced start up ideas off of these guys, since well before they started their programs. All too predictably, the law guy now tends to bring up legal issues first thing, and the biz guy pokes holes in the financial model (both of these guys used to simply attack the idea directly). It's their new pair of glasses at work.

Once every three months or so FSJ says something that makes people laugh and think (the rest of the time he settles for just making people laugh).

This one struck me as summing a well-known phenomenon up rather well, and with a catchy phrase to go along with it.

Oftentimes judgment is clouded by prior experience as FSJ describes.

Unfortunately our dear fake Steve has setup a bit of a strawman. No core idea is disputed, just the qualifications of those trying to approach the problem.

EnerNet and other negawatt proposals attack the same kind of inefficiencies in power utilities as once plagued circuit switched telephone utilities. The two problems are actually analogous, which FSJ hasn't analyzed at all.

eh, i think that one pair of glasses likely leads to cross-pollinization across disciplines which does help us solve problems. in my world, negroponte can bring his laptops to africa, some education expert will bring their knowledge of teaching/classroom dynamics, etc, and all this will be brought to bear on the problem of poverty. competition of ideas will lead to the incorporation of good aspects of these theories and we'll be on our way. the fact is that existing orthodox strategies in these fields have failed which is why solutions from other disciplines are proposed.

Sneering is not an argument, ad hominem circumstantial is not evidence. Fail.

a statement my mentor said once

'People who have made money, think they are really smart in all areas...'

it applies here.

Having not thought about it much before, I found the "Metcalfe's Law is Wrong"[1] article more interesting.

[1] - http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/4109

I thought this idea was generally known as "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

If your going to have one pair of glasses, it should be logic.

If you get two, make it logic and awareness of the immediacy of death.

Most of everything else will fall out of those two ways of looking at the world.

And how many pairs of glasses does mr fakesteve own? OK, he had one brilliant idea: to pose as somebody else who is famous. Whoa, genius!!! It really dwarfs inventing ethernet.