I have always wondered how things would turn out to be when people say a lot of "what-if" stuff. What if I can go back in time? What if I have all the money in the world? What if I can fly? Also, there are a lot of questions in defining the being of a certain type of person. For example, how would you characterize a person who is all bad or who is all good? What if someone always chooses to do something that is not the normal way? I was trying to think through it at a very high level. I am sure I am deriving a lot of generalities. But, the key is in looking at a problem in a different dimension.
Let us consider a simple example. What can I possibly do if I go back in time? Will I be able to correct all the wrongs and do all the rights? If you think about it, you will realise that there is no optimal solution. If you do something right, something else is going to be wrong. If you think through each and every what-if type of questions, you will realise that things will certainly have a different outcome, but not the way one would wish for it to be, for we all assume that the universe is a constant when it is not...
Next, to the question of someone being all bad. How will you define someone to be all bad? If you write down the list of things that would characterise someone to be bad and draw a dependency chain between the different bad characteristics, you will realise that several things will be masked out. For example, if one aspect of "bad" is to not to talk to anyone, then anything that you would characterise in terms of interpersonal relationship will be masked out. Eventually, the perfect bad person will be an isolate. It is left as an exercise to you to think of who would be a perfect "good" person...:)...
To sum it up, if you recursively apply certain simple rules that characterise a particular person, then you will find that the entire behaviour will lead to a singleton. The converse should also be true. If you focus on some of the simple rules, then all the random outcomes that spawn out will evolve correspondingly. In other words, there is no complex problem. Or rather, any complex problem is a manifestation of a simple problem. Finding the root cause is the key !
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Root Cause
Posted by Suresh Sankaralingam at 1:03 PM
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2 comments:
Thought (or sleep) provoking blog!
Problem is trying to find that "Simple" root problem is much difficult than attacking multiple problems.
One simple "Theory of everything" is all physicst trying for past 30 years. May be subconsiously human race searches for the root cause always.
Your second para talking about going back to the past is depicted well in one Ashton Kutcher movie..I think it is "butterfly" or something like that. He goes back to the past to rectify something which ends up in some other mess..Finally, he realises that the best solution is if he was never born ,goes back, kills himself in the womb. Kinda eerie..The point is..u can never have something always good or bad..it is all perspective and momentary.
Coming to characterising a person, who do you think should make the rules? Even the rules are relative..there are no absolute rules to characterise someone. But, if you are talking about just applying simple rules to solve even complex problems....maybe yes..
Now, lets apply some simple rules..
Is he too talkative?
Does he ever listen to what you are saying?
Does he have attention deficit disorder when it comes to listening to his spouse?
Hmmmm....hopefully if I can answer all the above questions, I can find the root cause..:-)
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