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gregvp's avatar

Abstraction is the curse of the age. My wife works in governance, and is perpetually saying to her colleagues, "so how does this policy work in practice? Here's a situation: [outlines an example]. Walk me through step by step how this policy works for this situation and these people."

The first time people hear this, they say "Sure! Step 1 is [step 1]. Then, uh, ... then, ... hmmm".

More experienced colleagues start saying "Perhaps we need to look at this more closely". And then they do. But they *still* retreat to abstractions all the time. All the time. I greatly admire my wife's patience.

Engineers cannot work with abstractions. They must work with reality. That is a powerful antipsychotic.

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