Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Solutions

People are judged most severely for what they think when they try to offer solutions to problems. Both the common man and politicians are discouraged from offering solutions because of this. Unfortunately, with a complex problem that requires lots of data sources, it is basically impossible to get it totally right on the first go. The first people to attempt to solve the problem are therefore the sacrificial lambs to the innovators who come after them and steal the glory with a more or less correct solution. Nobody wants to be that first guy, and so problems go unsolved.

In many scientific spheres, there is an attitude of development and documentation that ensure that people receive their due. The system in place is much more encouraging of speculation, and of course because scientists are an elite club, they always give each others' ideas more deference. Hence, natural science has developed splendidly, while social science, dependent on systems where individual expertise is always in doubt, can never build off the theories of those who came before.

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