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“Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

toyota-global.com

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Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#121

Post by Bartweiss »

rileymat2 wrote: post #88

Sometimes I have multiple solutions to a problem in mind and want to throughly investigate them, but run into a minor road block when investigating one of them. In forums, some of the most annoying threads are people that are trying to help you "solve your real problem" instead of helping with the specific question at hand.

This might be the deepest issue with Stack Overflow.

People post some bizarre objective/problem (because the bizarre stuff is what you need to ask about), and half the comments are people asserting that their goal is wrong.

There's no clear solution, though, because half the time the goal really is misguided, and the other half the "right" way is for some reason unavailable. The best answer I've seen is for commenters to offer "you really shouldn't do that normally, but you could try this to make it happen".

Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#122

Post by Bartweiss »

xyzzyz wrote: post #91
rileymat2 wrote: post #88

Sometimes I have multiple solutions to a problem in mind and want to throughly investigate them, but run into a minor road block when investigating one of them. In forums, some of the most annoying threads are people that are trying to help you "solve your real problem" instead of helping with the specific question at hand.

You know what's even more annoying? People who ask very misguided questions, because they're obviously trying to solve a wrong problem, and yet insist on doing things their own way even though it will lead them nowhere. They're much more common than people who know what they're talking about, and it's usually easy to tell them apart based on the communication style.

More common perhaps, but not always more significant. Stack Overflow is a messy blend of the two: lots of questions want to do some strange thing, and it's not always clear why.

The result is that people who don't know better are taught how to do dangerous things (like messing with the history of shared git repos), while people with weird special circumstances get second guessed and lectured.

At least online, I absolutely disagree with the idea that it's easy to tell the two groups apart. Doing so is one of the bigger challenges for lots of "advice" forums.

Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#123

Post by csours »

Joeri wrote: post #43
iaskwhy wrote: post #9

I don't force it 5x but asking why was the best lesson I learnt working with users/clients as people tend to talk about solutions and not the problems. That's also where my nickname comes from.

Feature requests are really prone to this. Customers will only ask for features they can imagine, not the ones that really solve their problem. A significant chunk of the time the customer is better served by a different feature that takes less work. This is why i don't like tender-based software projects. The tender already describes the features needed, and they must be built even if they are suboptimal for the pro…

One of our Business Partners suggested a pop up box with Yes No Cancel, and then went on to describe the behaviors of each button. Absolutely no imagination. It's like people have been broken by years of limited choices.

Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#124

Post by csours »

arethuza wrote: post #68
wccrawford wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually ask, "What problem are you trying to solve?", to anyone who brings me a solution instead of a problem, but it comes down to the same thing. I guess I don't even really know which question would be more efficient at getting the real answer.

I wonder how that sits with "Don't bring me problems—bring me solutions" that I occasionally hear from non-technical managers...

A problem without a suggested solution is a complaint. If your people only bring you complaints, it is a drain on everyone; it breeds discontent in the workforce and contempt in management.

Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#127

Post by kamaal »

satysin wrote: post #86
KhalilK wrote: post #7

Reminds me of Feynman's answer[0] when asked about magnets. 0. http://youtu.be/MO0r930Sn_8

I love Feynman. He was an incredible teacher but this video has always annoyed me a little. The interviewer asked a pretty clear question (explain why magnets repel or attract depending on how you align them) but Feynman goes on a bit of a rant about how the guy won't understand if he explains things as he (Feynman) understands it and that he (Feynman) doesn't know how to explain it to him (interview) in ways he woul…

Feynman tries to explain the absurdity of trying to ask questions which if divided down to their most simplistic forms can't give binary 'yes' or 'no' answers.

The issue with the 'why' questions is at the bottom most place in the the 'why' stack you need to have an axiom/postulation or at least a plain assumption, without which you can't explain the subsequent 'why' or 'how' questions.

Now this a classic trick in trying to prove science as useless and propel pseudo science concepts among crackpots.

Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#128

Post by mesozoic »

dalke wrote: post #38
drb311 wrote: post #30

A very good approach. Frequently talked about, rarely applied.

I find it hard to figure out if I'm only finding the answer I'm looking for. Apply 5 whys to "Why did Snowden leak classified information?" I can think of multiple directions it can go: "he's a traitor who managed to get around security policies", "the US spies too much", and "contractors aren't covered under internal whistleblower protections so leaking was the most likely way to get things to change."

Typically you'd avoid subjective analysis in 5 why's so transform traitor into person and too much into empty string and in the third answer it should probably have "was perceived by Snowden as the most likely"

Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#129

Post by saosebastiao »

iaskwhy wrote: post #9

I don't force it 5x but asking why was the best lesson I learnt working with users/clients as people tend to talk about solutions and not the problems. That's also where my nickname comes from.

A blind drunk man was jaywalking and was hit by a distracted and inexperienced driver and died. Why did he die? There likely isn't a singular root cause. There are 5 potential singular root causes, but they are a subset of the 5-factorial potential combinatorial root causes.

I agree that solutions before problems is bad, but the five whys is problematic simply because it promotes the idea of singular root cause which is almost inevitably a fallacy when analyzing complex systems. There are often conceivably millions of overlapping and/or interacting causes to an observable problem. Sometimes, trying to boil causality down to a single item is merely missing the point, but very often it is much more problematic. Unintended consequences from solutions derived from improperly attributed singular root causes can be terrifying.

Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”

#130

Post by kamaal »

ajuc wrote: post #5
hoodoof wrote: post #3

"Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?"

It's supposed to be why(why(why(why(why(theMatter)))); not why(theMatter); why(theMatter); why(theMatter); why(theMatter); why(theMatter);

I think its more like:

    Answer Why(Answer question) {
        if(validDivisibleQuestion(question){
            return Why(question);
        }
    }
I guess this is how our mind handles stuff too, and because of the stack issues is why working things on papers works better than doing it in mind.
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