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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

"Tech/nerd/stem types absolutely love to do this. We take a problem, pare it down to its essence and then solve it."

In my experience, the tech/nerd/stem types being hypothesized about actually do not pare a problem down to its essence. They instead do the equivalent to attempting to solve the screaming of a hungry child by assuming the essence of the problem is that "too much sound", so we put the child in a soundproofed room.

In truth, it is entirely possible to apply pure logic to a problem if the problem is appropriately scoped to closely align with actual reality. In my experience, to deny the emotional aspects of something is actually irrational behavior- it makes incorrect assumptions that the only things that exist are what the tech/nerd/stem person understands themselves.

This results in the hypocritical behavior of a tech/nerd/stem type crying out (emotionally) to solve the problems of emotionality.

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I think we agree, but I appreciate that my wording wasn't perfectly clear.

"pare down to its essence" was a bad way of saying "disregard intersecting issues and focus on one logically resolvable issue." Your soundproofed room analogy is apt.

I also agree with applying pure logic to a scoped problem being not only possible but desirable... but I'd argue that properly scoped problems are rarely as useful to solve as the scoper might think. In many cases "merely" scoping the problem in a novel way leads directly to a truly useful course of action, and is most of the hard work.

I agree completely with emotions being something we should not deny, but rather be something to /include/ when trying to solve problems. (My complaints are around emotions being placed outside or opposed to the realm of logic, where accounting for them is "illogical")

Yes, I agree- but what fo you mean by "merely scoping the problem in a novel way" and how does it differ from the way I describe scoping?

(Not attacking, genuinely curious because I'd love to find new and more useful courses of action when it comes to problems...)

I think we are both arguing that some people narrow the scope of arguments to the point that they aren't useful to the original problem, merely more amenable to logic. Let's call this "not useful scoping".

I further argue that useful scoping (isolating the problem in a way that solving it provides a solution amenable to all those who proposed the problem) often /is/ the hard work, itself a product of much time and logic.

Far from proposing a useful course of action: I simply lament that we will often choose our scope to support simple logic, rather than use complex logic to improve the scope.

No surprise either: each life only has so many hours.

Ah, ok, thanks for clarifying.

It is possible to genuinely enjoy scoping the problems out though, evaluating their complexities, etc. It's also possible to say "I don't have time to evaluate the thing, so I'm not going to conclude anything about it" (although the latter irritates lots of friends, haha)

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