Idont Know

A great litmus to apply to any speaker, and especially scientists and engineers, is their willingness to say IdontKnow. If they'd rather wave their hands instead, they're generally not worth much to you. There are some obvious exceptions ...

But since TriteSayingsComeInPairs, the opponent here is "Can do".

An interesting example of this comes up in any semi-technical history of the Manhattan Project (e.g. in "The Curve of Binding Energy" or portions of the Feynman bio "Genius"). Literally, they didn't know any number of things, but that wasn't the point, the point was to find a way, and they did.

We still don't have a single accurate model of the nucleus, to this day; nuclear scientists and engineers continue to use a grab-bag of different models, such as the surface-tension model, switching models whenever it seems like it might be helpful. So we still don't know. But that was never the point.

We use the best understandings we have at the time, sure. But if we aren't willing to say IdontKnow, those understandings become dogma, and prevent rather than enable progress.

The opponent here is saying "nobody can be sure", and so dismissing the possibility of reasonable certainty.

CategoryCommunication