The McDonald's Theory of Bad Ideas
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Duh.
That's what Wikipedia was like after it was created: random people writing a few words about some subject they thought they knew something about. It didn't seem like it would amount to much, at the time.
In addition to a great deal of general information substantially duplicating what you already could have found on the internet (much of Wikipedia is actually scraped/aggregated from elsewhere, which is the real use of crowdsourcing here), it's also jammed full of trivialities and utterly biased, misleading, politicized articles guarded jealously by special interest groups. All those interest groups together form one giant defensive cabal which rejects criticism of Wikipedia and is constantly begging for money to sustain itself. Because it's democratic, you see, and not dominated by those egghead academic experts (but rather by Wikipedia experts, who established their tenure by making an account and writing rarely-verified information to Wikipedia in a way that complied with the politics of Wikipedia incumbents).
Wikipedia could have put effort into seriously verifying incoming information, but that would have made it an elitist affair like academia. Or it could have seriously taken everything democratically, which would have made it a total populist mess. Instead it created its own insular oligarchy to tell everyone what is true or not. And the appointments of this oligarchy are utterly opaque, but they definitely aren't based on any combination of merit and democracy.
And that's a good thing to you.
An unreliable encyclopedia is the most useless thing in the world. An unreliable encyclopedia with the most powerful SEO in history...is a grave threat to human knowledge.
Usually when people criticize SEO, its over the methods used to get irrelevant links on pages, putting junk in your serps. Afaik wikipedia does well because people link to its content, not because of spam tactics.
The first page will often have literally 5+ links to wikipedia, and those articles will cite the never-visited reliable page but get a lot of the details wrong.
You're absolutely right that it's a cultural issue more so than a tech issue. Wikipedia marketing has managed to convince people that an amateur content farm should be the first stop for information. But why should your first stop be amateurs who often get it wrong?
Ask any academic how good wikipedia is for their specialty. It always ranges from "ok" to "terrible". And why would we expect anything else? How can amateurs be expected to understand, interpret, and report on reams of subtle developments in any area?
The best wikipedia articles are the ones that tend most toward plagiarism--literally just copying the words and concepts of an academic while barely rephrasing them to avoid copyright infringement. It's not worthwhile.
Meanwhile, every important article on wikipedia has a high quality, professionally written counterpart on Encyclopedia Britannica. What's the point of wikipedia?
For an easy example just search any topic in philosophy. Wikipedia comes up first. Read that, then read Stanford Encyclopedia, then read Encyclopedia Britannica.
Why is wikipedia the top hit? Because their SEO/marketing is overwhelming. It's definitely not due to quality! In contrast, the other two options being beat out by Wikipedia SEO are written by notable experts. The quality difference is enormous. EB and SEP can actually be relied on. On wikipedia you never know what important subtlety they got wrong.
Wikipedia is the eHow or expertsexchange of information. It's a drag on human knowledge. It needs to die.
I do realise Wikipedia is far from perfect. So many articles don't cite their sources, for example, or cite some personal website that doesn't cite any sources at all.
But I'm not the vulnerable population. Most people don't know to do that, and just think wiki info is fine when it's not.
The results that give 5+ wikipedias on one search are usually long tailed.
Here's one search I just made up:
logic axioms encyclopedia
First 4 hits are wikipedia, all 4 of them are shit. If you just add -wikipedia the results are infinitely better. Therefore, wikipedia is a low quality content farm shitting up the Internet.
It also doesn't help that google, apple products and other services now directly prioritize wikipedia.
Example:
continental philosophy definition
Google first gives a big bold wikipedia box, presenting wikipedia info as if it is the fucking gospel.
Then the next hit is wikipedia.
Then the rest are a mix of reliable sites that wikipedia stole its content from, and wikipedia subsidiaries (Jimmy Wales affiliated) like Citizendium.
How is this considered ok? It's an intellectual travesty and a giant threat to public education. How many people will click the first link, or the giant google endorsed wikipedia box, and ignore all the reliable experts below it?
A free source written by top philosphers is Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy. That should be the first hit.
If Wikipedia wants to be a link farm with citations and links to every source on some topic, that might be an OK service. That's not what they are. They claim to be an encyclopedia. They get it 80% right, but 20% wrong is unacceptable for the world's go-to source for information. Especially when the better alternatives are just as accessible; they only lack SEO.
It should work equally well as a creativity trigger, and if nobody comes up with something different you still end up with a choice that's not so bad.
This means that either A) Lunch isn't as important as everyone seems to make it out to be , or B) McDonald's is "good enough" or C) some combination of factors including A and B that suggest worrying about where you are eating for lunch isn't worth any of your time today.
for (int i = 0; i < alpha; ++i) {
for (int j = 0; j < beta; ++j) {
for (int k = 0; k < gamma; ++k) {
...The danger is that you leave the solution at too early a stage, and other things start relying on your flimsy rope bridge. It gets really difficult to go back and do things better.
You should try test driven development :)
For me, "TTD" in the context of a discussion about bridges just means Transport Tycoon Deluxe o_O I assume that's not it?
and if you're already developing in a style that is amenable to TDD, you should totally try it!
As opposed to TTD, which is test to destruction.
Or DDT, which is development driven testing.
Or DMD, which is don't mean diddly.
http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.htm...
Often you overcomplicate implementation by thinking about the right way from the start, and while this is a good thing to do in general, sometimes it gets in your way. I like to think of the simplest possible way to write it (not necessarily the "worst" but just the simplest). Then you have something, anything at all, and you can go from there.
My ex-coworker always said "Make it work, then make it good, then make it fast." Good rule of thumb that has taken me pretty far in code productivity.
This article is basically a rehash of Fred Brooks "pilot system" concept where regardless of if they admit it or not, the first system design will be a throwaway which the team uses to gel their ideas around. Often the second system ends up like the above paragraph.
As far as I know Brooks was the first turn of this eternal IT wheel, and he wrote this in the mid 70s about his experiences in the 60s. I'm still young enough that I suspect most of what Brooks invented in the 70s will be rediscovered many more times before I retire. As far as I know Brooks was not rehashing someone previous to him, I'd be interested to learn if anyone has older references.
Its still a reasonably well written article, even if there's nothing new in it. Brooks's original writing is also pretty good, if you want to see the future of software development, what will be claimed to be "invented" over and over in future decades, you could do worse than "the mythical man month". The re-release is better than the original but not immensely so, so don't freak if your local library only has the first edition.
I've done something similar.
I was a new minted engineering manager. We had lotsa grumpy gate keepers. Domain experts who would withhold information, but happy to snipe later on.
So when it wasn't clear (to my immediate team) what to do, I'd add something really stupid, but plausible, to the requirements. Then claim the document was being sent to our dealer channel.
Oh boy! Then I'd get the feedback I needed.
When smart people explain complex subjects clearly and confidently we have the tendency to say "oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense." In reality nothing is always true but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't good to fool ourselves into thinking so. In fact it's probably how progress is made. If people knew how hard most things were going to be at the outset, they'd never start and look for something easier to do.
I feel as if you read this as simply a rehash of known techniques, and what I saw was a light hearted/entertaining story, that anyone can relate to and take value from.
Does anyone really think this group of coworkers, which almost surely eats something, somewhere eat day needs "inspiration" that they are truly bereft of ideas when this happens?
I don't.
They aren't out of ideas, they're avoiding blame - the inevitable bitching, disagreement or silent resentment that comes with making a choice.
It's the same blame culture that screws up any number of workplaces only worse as there may be nothing so pressing and universally felt as something like the human need for sustenance.
Projects are put off for days, weeks or years and they aren't universally felt when they remain undone. Individuals can't necessarily act to satiate themselves either, that could make them "cowboys".
In the original analogy, silence is complacency, the stream of ideas is a reactive response and the question should really be about how to eliminate the blame culture and replace it with something proactive and productive.
We go out to lunch several times a week, and unless someone is craving something, it almost always comes down to this. We use Subway instead of McDonalds, but the result is the same.
There is no blame, we honestly can't think of where to eat until some idea is thrown out there. Then all of a sudden we remember that mexican place in the park, or the new burger joint that opened up a few weeks ago. We throw out suggestions and if we all agree, then we go. It just takes a little push to get the ball rolling.
Does this pervasive forgetfulness show up everywhere in your lives?
If so, you guys should probably be mulling over doctors, not lunch. If not, you might want to reconsider what I've suggested and why you so consistently "forget" in socially arbitrated situations.
Here's the summary:
1. A post uses food as a metaphor* to make a point.
2. You basically say bullshit to the food, then rant about life.
3. Someone says "I dunno if it's BS, I've experienced this!"
4. And you say "then there's something wrong with you".
Fuck you, buddy.
*I'm the guy who wrote the essay, and for the record it was referring to a bunch of foodies in a design studio who were a few blocks from Pike Place market. It was Hick's Law in action. Frequently.
That's amusing to see in a post where you've included both an "asshole" and a "fuck you".
>Here's the summary:
More like an angry oversimplification.
1&2: I think your post actually goes in two directions, finding individual motivation and catalyzing group motivations. The latter is what I chose to comment on.
3&4: The commentor offered an anecdote, I asked him to think critically about what he's saying versus experiencing. You've taken it upon yourself to assume a very specific response and quote it as a statement - ridiculous.
Interesting theory, but I think something else is happening here.
If you have a bunch of people trying to solve a problem, the game is implicitly defined as "propose the best solution." After the first proposal, the game changes to "improve on the best solution so far."
This is something to keep in mind during interviews [1] for people on both sides of the table. If a candidate is silent for too long, propose a bad idea and ask them to improve on it. That gets them talking out loud, and you get more info to go on. If you're a candidate, you can start with a bad (yet probably obvious) solution and explain why it's bad. In the process of talking it through, you'll likely think of a better solution.
[1] The algorithm/coding one-big-question-over-45-minutes style of interviews commonly conducted by large software companies.
So they create a reference mission, and then compare candidates to that. Something doesn't have to be strictly better (if there were something strictly better they probably would have found it), but you then understand the trade-offs you are making from it.
When you can't make progress and choose between two comparable options, Dan Ariely (behavioral economist) recommends you flip a coin. As you flip it, the impact of a potential decision might prompt you to realize the outcome you truly want.
However, there is a caveat: "The coin trick is indeed only useful for cases where the two options are of the same type (two cameras, two movies, etc). In your example, one option is more tempting in the short term (chocolate cake) while the other is better in the long term (fruit). In such cases we should not trust our gut feelings to drive us to the best decisions."
http://danariely.com/2013/01/05/ask-ariely-on-stretching-tim...
We all feel something for our own genuine suggestions, a sort of ownership, and so fear the possibility of rejection as it would be a rejection of something personal to us, our preference.
When someone suggests a universally and whole heartily rejected idea we can take a degree of security from that that our idea will not be as universally disliked; "Well it's not as bad as McDonald's"
It's also possible that it just gets the "flow" going, which again is more to do with removing peoples fears i.e. "well, he suggested an idea and it wasn't so bad for him so I may as well suggest one as well"
I tend to use a similar tactic when we're brainstorming internal project ideas especially. I'll come up with something really stupid to break the ice and then others feel better knowing their ideas probably aren't nearly as bad.
Strangely having mcdonalds in eastern europe was more like canada then the US.
*last time was a few years ago
McDonald's Australia has excellent QA, process management and supply chain. I received some insight through someone...involved in all that good stuff (my background is QA/Environment so I get to meet some interesting people from various industries).
Coworkers from the US all tend to say the same thing after going to an AU McDonald's - great burgers but ~3x the price. It's a different beast in the US where quantity trumps quality.
What this doesn't change, though, is that their food (fries excepted) tastes like total shit. And their burgers taste like nothing. But it does so consistently.
I'm sorry, but my bad opinion of McDonald's is not based on the quality of their ingredients or their quality. It's based on taste.
Quote: I spent some time working in the television industry, and I learned a technique that writers use. It's called "the bad version." When you feel that a plot solution exists, but you can't yet imagine it, you describe instead a bad version that has no purpose other than stimulating the other writers to imagine a better version.
It is hard to consider McDonald's the "cheap option" when a big mac and fries is $8, but a gyro and fries that taste way better, and are ~30% more food is $5 at the place across the street. McDonald's is actually the second most expensive fast food option I've found, only being cheaper than Mucho Burrito (which is far better food).
From what I've seen, the inverse of this seems to also imply where a group will end up going for lunch. I've had co-workers say Costco or Taco Bell "isn't lunch". Because of those negative statements, that is exactly where the group ends up going.
ps. This article hurt my feelings as an MCD stockholder. :)
As soon add you say "always" you are almost certainly wrong, and you have most likely missed something important, or at least relevant. This article dismisses a huge breadth of ideas and processes simply because sometimes it is effective to skip them.
It's a pattern - applicable to any "analysis paralysis" scenario - break the ice by suggesting a lowest-common-denominator (bad) suggestion, and let others be the "winners" by suggesting "acceptable" choices.
By suggesting the unseemly, you actually end up doing the graceful thing.
Seemed very plausible to me.
Get to work and don't be afraid to propose ideas you have.
And you're saying "just don't be scared".
(shrug)
Don't stop the conveyor belt.
(As an aside, many restaurants aren't necessarily any healthier than fast food.)