Amputating reality

by John on December 1, 2011

“If you just rely on one model, you tend to amputate reality to make it fit your model.” — David Brooks

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 rd_nielsen 12.01.11 at 23:21: This is all too true of databases–and who builds multiple alternative database for their data?
2 Christopher Allen-Poole 12.01.11 at 23:38: Sounds like the Grimm version of Cinderella
3 vonjd 12.02.11 at 02:10: Or as Abraham Maslow said in 1966, “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
4 John 12.02.11 at 03:34: rd_nielsen: Reminds me of advice from Derek Sivers. He said not to come up with a business plan. Come up with 10 business plans, each as different as you can imagine, because your business is almost certainly not going to unfold according to your first idea.

Christopher: It’s appropriate that ‘Grimm’ is so close to ‘grim’.

vonjd: Thanks for bringing that up. That gives me an idea for another post.
5 Mac Ryan 12.02.11 at 06:31: Funny enough my browser had a glitch and the page froze for a moment displaying only:

““If you just rely on one model, you tend to amputa
6 Jan Van lent 12.02.11 at 08:13: Don’t know if the original quote referred to this, but it reminded me of Procrustes: if you have two models you can be evil and choose the one that let’s you amputated most [1] (with links to interesting mathematics and statistics).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes