Sunday, November 11, 2007

The need for Nuance

Most people feel so uncomfortable with uncertainty that they will sacrifice accuracy for comfort. As a result, they are not prepared to consider nuances in situations. We force-fit new situations into the solutions to old ones. We over-simplify analyses. We make generalizations about people and things.

In so doing, we do ourselves a disservice. Many situations are complex and need to be examined as such. People are not uni-dimensional. When we compress a complex situation into a 30 second sound-bite, we short-change ourselves.

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