Category: Ambiguity
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Asking Permission vs. Getting It Done
But won’t your manager be mad that you’re doing something that isn’t your job? – A good friend after I told him about a project I was working on that would help the organization but was never explicitly requested. What job description did you get hired into? – Two different people when I told them…
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Laughing At Failure
While visiting a friend who has a great espresso machine, I went to go grind some coffee in preparation of pulling an awesome shot of espresso. When the coffee grinder was under the cabinets, it looked like it had an open top so I took a handful of coffee and dropped it into the hopper…
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Technological Stockholm Syndrome
Just the other day, I had lunch with a friend who just started working as an engineer. I asked him whether he was enjoying his job. He said that it’s a bit different than he expected and that he’s spending a lot of time banging his head against the wall just to figure out how…
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Why Are There So Many Coincidences?
Imagine these graphs show the location of those living with a fatal disease. There are clearly some places that don’t have the disease and other places that seem more prone to it. I even circled a clump to illustrate that something is clearly wrong with that area and we should do more research, or should…
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Enough
Joe Heller – by Kurt Vonnegut True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than…
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Why Doctors Have Weird Names
Ever noticed that many doctors have funny, sometimes ironic names — names like: Dr. Bayer (asprin anyone?), Dr. Killam (yikes), Dr. Mooney (something he sees a lot of), and Dr. Strong. We’ve all heard people express surprise at the name of many doctors and wonder how they could have gone into medicine. My parents dentist…
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Are you more honest than the average person?
Imagine you are sitting in a room taking a problem solving test. There is no one else in the room, no cameras, no fancy mirrors. It’s just you. Next to you is the answer sheet and an envelope with $20 in it. When you’ve finished the test, you’re instructed to correct your own test, take…
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Iatrogenics: When Systems Thinking Fails Us
One of my friends told me a story to explain the personality differences between himself and his wife, as they were opposite personality types. She once asked him how to send a particular email and he responded by saying, “Here are the things when you want to consider when sending an email: first….”. She interrupted…
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Resorting To The Cheat Solution
Imagine designing a thermostat with ants. Seriously, try to get your brain to focus on how to solve when to turn the furnace on using ants. If you’re like me, our brain just sits there and says, “with ants!? WITH ANTS!?”. Then responds, “let’s solve the problem without ants.” Read: one where we already know…
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Accomplish Great Things Without Knowing How
When we first start playing chess, we calculate out all the possible moves we can make and consider each one. We decide on some immediate aim (taking a piece) for which we can see all the moves we need to take to get there. We quickly find there are limits to this approach as our…