In one of my pattern books, I have a pattern called “Knowledge as Hypothesis”. I’ve always liked the problem statement in that pattern; so much so that I designed a kind of block quote for it that I have on my wall:
But in this format, it’s very easy to get the wrong idea. You can easily read “Decide you know, then stop thinking and start defending.”
Definitely not the message I’m trying to convey. So I redesigned it:
Now the quick read is “Decide you don’t know, then stop defending and start thinking.” That’s the message I’m going for.
I think it’s a good illustration of how our brains can be affected by subtle differences in the way we phrase things or present them.
