Question Everything
Passionate Curiosity will Drive Renovating Our Bedrock
“Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.”
- George E. P. Box, British statistician
“First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.”
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980
I was scuba diving off the Yucatan with my two kids in 2006. At ten and thirteen, they were old enough to safely scuba, but I was a nervous dad as we set out snooping around a beautiful reef, brilliant with life. Jenny wanted to explore and cover as much ground as possible. She moved quickly around, poking into a nook, and moving on. As I kicked to keep up with her, I kept having to slow down and look around for Zach, my youngest. He had settled into one spot on the bottom, digging and sifting, intently studying one spot. As the kids got more and more separated, I realized that if something went wrong, I wouldn’t be able to get to both of them fast enough.
By the time we got back in the boat, I was frustrated with Zach. I asked him, “Why did you just sit on the bottom and dig? It’s just sand. You should have kept up with me and Jenny.” His response was classic 10-year-old: “The more I dug, the more cool stuff I found.”
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”- Albert Einstein, 1952
I was reminded of this scuba story this week as I dug into the many details that, in aggregate, make up any given company's product, team, and culture. Over time, the decisions of these organizations' finest minds have layered reason upon reason, depositing blankets of sediment that have slowly calcified into the bedrock of the business.
Should we pause and question the stability of this ground? Are we too busily focused on dozens of daily details swarming around our heads to be bothered with the ground under our feet? Are we too busy to ask questions?
In 1916, Einstein eulogized Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. His words, from nearly 100 years ago, remind us that his visceral repulsion of authority unleashed restraints from his creativity.
Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they might come to be stamped as "necessities of thought," "a priori givens," etc. The path of scientific progress is often made impassable for a long time by such errors. Therefore it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analysing long-held commonplace concepts and showing the circumstances on which their justification and usefulness depend, and how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. Thus their excessive authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, or replaced if a new system can be established that we prefer.
Take a moment and think of a few “givens” that box you in at your company. We are often caged by our assumption that a well-entrenched concept is correct. We must force the justification of our erstwhile immutables. Creatively challenging our most closely-held thoughts will expand business opportunity. Yes, pondering questions such as this is a distraction from our daily work. Managing these distractions isn’t easy. The more we cast off our old ideas, old code, processes, and other givens, the more work we create for ourselves as we implement anew. Be prepared. The fearful will say that you may see hell when you renovate bedrock. I’m not afraid of a little hard work, especially with this team at my back. So, let’s get started. Question everything.
When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.
- Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
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