Rant #1: Use Your Own Fucking Brain, Mine's Got Better Things To Do

I'm tired of answering incredibly stupid questions and pointing out the obvious for the brainless. I get what seems like 300 phone calls a day at work from our first-level support person who, it seems, can't spend five seconds thinking about something before calling me for an answer. And what's worse is that she is just passing on stupid questions from even stupider users. Now it is one thing to get a question about something I am already expert in (for example software I have written myself), but to be asked repeated questions about a new package that I've gotten the first glimpse of at the same time as everyone else involved because I'm the only one who can wrap my head around something new just serves to piss me off and detract from the time I should be spending building things.

This doesn't just happen at work. I'm ranting about work at the moment because I just fielded yet another barrage of stupid questions, but it comes up outside of work and I just don't understand it. The concepts behind figuring *anything* out are simple enough. Nothing happens without a cause (ex nihil nihilo fit). If something breaks or suddenly "mysteriously" doesn't work like it used to, back-pedal until you can identify what's changed. Eliminate things one at a time. If you change 14 things all at once to "fix" something you'll never know what *really* fixed it. If you take you time and figure out what the problem really was and what really fixed it you'll be in good stead for the next time something similar happens. And that way the more things you understand how you actually fixed them, the more you'll get a handle on how things work in general. That's all there is to fixing something that is broken: It worked. Then X changed and it broke. X is the difference. Find X. It's that easy. You learn this processes in junior high science class. Or at least you would have if you (or your teacher) didn't have your (his) head up your (his) ass.

It's not rocket science. In fact rocket science isn't "rocket science".

"Lets put a bunch of volitle chemicals in a tube and make it fly."

"Oh, it blew up. How come and how can we keep that from happening?"

"OK. It's not blowing up now, but it won't fly straight. How can we fix that?"

"Fins?"

"They help, but not enough"

"Fins and a gyroscope?"

"That works."

"OK, lets try making a bigger one."

"Oh, it blew up. How come and how can we keep that from happening?"

The basic procedure here is this:

1. What do you want to know?
2. What do you already know?
3. What's missing between 1 and 2?

Now spend your time on the difference between 1 and 2. If there are a bunch of things missing, fill them in one at a time. Start with the easier ones. It's like doing a crossword. Don't know 1 down? Fill in 1,2, 3, 4 and 5 across. Look! 1 down is done. Pretty soon the whole fucking crossword is done. Welcome to science. Once again you should have picked this up in junior high. Or, if your parents weren't mollycoddling you, when you were four.

I've seen four-year olds hook up component stereos. As a matter of fact, it's *easy* to teach a four year old to hook up a component stereo because they generally haven't been turned into "magical thinking" morons. You know what magic is? A cause and effect chain where you can't see the links in the middle. Kids ask questions like, "how does that work?" and "why did that happen?" Adults give stupid answers like "magic" "God's Will / the will of the gods" and similar bullshit rather than "I don't know, let's see if we can figure it out" or "I don't know, maybe you can figure it out one day and explain it to me" because they are afraid of admitting ignorance or just plain want the kid to shut the fuck up and then go ahead and rationalize it with statements like "kids should believe in magic" "the world would be boring without magic" or "some things shouldn't be explained" O.K. Next time your kid gets sick take him to a witch doctor. When the kid dies and the witch doctor blames it on "God's Will" and explains why with "some things shouldn't be explained" see what you think of magic. Thanks to magical thinking most people are out there running around unable to even approach wrapping their heads around the "magic boxes" that are their computers, telephones, televisions, microwave ovens, the car engines, or even a lighter. Start picking people off the street at random and see how long it takes to find a person who can figure out how to make fire without "magic", let alone have the foggiest how to make a telephone or fix a nail-gun ;-).

And just in case you are thinking, what a sad world I live in that I don't believe in magic, don't. Because just because I don't believe there is anything unexplainable doesn't mean I don't believe in the unexplained. I can't prove that ghosts exist, but I can't prove tachyons exist either. Knowledge and belief are different things. Knowledge is reasonably well defined as justified true belief, and that leads to another rant.