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Re: barometer parable



I am familiar with Sagan's comments as quoted by Bill Beaty, and I
agree with them. It is important to be open to new ideas when seeking
solutions to knotty problems, even ideas that at first glance seem to
be impossible. Wasn't it the Queen of Spades who said things like "I
try to believe three impossible things before breakfast every day"?
But there is a difference between "impossible" and "ridiculous." When
I first heard of the idea of brainstorming, I was intrigued and
excited by the idea, and then I participated in a few sessions in
which the participants were encouraged to turn off their "internal
filters" and pop out with whatever entered their minds, and no one
was allowed to comment on any of them. I was so totally turned off by
the hurricane of inane and silly ideas that resulted and which were
dutifully written down by the moderators that the whole process put
me in a bad humor and I was unable to come up with anything (not that
I necessarily would have anyway). At the end, we had one or two ideas
that seemed so obvious to me that anyone could have come up with them
on their own, and a whole slew of the most ridiculous tripe I have
ever seen. I felt that several hours of my time and that of the rest
of the participants had been totally wasted. The problem seems to be
that once the silly ideas start pouring out, they drive out the good
ones, and all you get are the silly ones, and people start trying to
outdo each other in how outrageous the ideas can get. It's not a
means to a solution; it becomes a time-wasting game.

Let me add that I am not opposed to wasting time. I waste a lot of
it, but usually it's wasted at doing something I at least find
pleasurable, if not productive, and I think I have a right not to
have my time wasted for me by others. I am quite capable of wasting
it on my own, thank you.

I agree that we need to remain open to the unusual and the
original--the stuff that looks impossible at first, but I think we
also need to remain alert against those ideas that cross the line
into the inane and silly. And also the ones that have been tried so
many times without result that there is no point in considering them
further.

It is a delicate balance, and we are not always able to readily
identify the one from the other. I am willing to give those on the
boundary the benefit of the doubt. But there is a limit, after all.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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