Posted by Boris on August 04, 1999 at 06:20:56:

In Reply to: Re: Knowledge, Format and Quality posted by P. Richard Hansen on August 02, 1999 at 20:05:39:

Richard,

You must've been one tough kid - to have to try or see everything before you believed it?! - Wow !

So let me get this right - how long did it take you to learn not to jump off cliffs? Did you take your parent's word for it when they said it was probably not the best thing for your health - or did you have to wait until you saw it live to disprove Wylie Coyote's ability to pick himself off the floor everytime he fell whist trying to catch the roadrunner?

Personally, when mine told me not to go jumping off cliffs - I bloody well believed them without having to try it out because I trusted them.

And that's a part of knowledge transfer by writing - the source of that writing is also very important.

For example - if my CEO wrote a paper saying that when involved in a complex merger one should always send your opposite number a list of all objectives within a week of the process starting - When I get in the same position, I'm not going to sit there and wait until everything goes pear-shaped to send that list if someone with his experience has identified this as a crucial acitvity. I don't think I'd be standing on very solid ground if, when asked later why I didn't send it , I simply said "Well, I hadn't experienced that problem myself, so I was waiting to see if something would go wrong.".

The term 're-inventing the wheel' comes to mind....

I don't actually believe that you do things strictly like you say you do - you probably just don't realise how much writing you accept and internalise as knowledge. If you did actually need to do EVERYTHING before you believed it, you'd have had a pretty slow development as a child (not to mention a busy one)!

So I'm with Martyn here - get Absurd man!

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