
The Role of Doubt in Design - imartin2k
https://matthewstrom.com/writing/doubt/
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00117
“Disclaimer: Richard Feynman was a colossal misogynist. I have a hard time
separating this fact from his contributions to science.”

I have heard that Socrates was fond of the young boys whom he taught. Why
mention an irrelevant bias of one and not another? Is the point to condone
behaviour that isn’t yet fully condoned by present society?

~~~
chrstphrhrt
Note: this started as a super brief comment and then expanded into a missive
because I was interrupted by a call with an artist friend and two glasses of
wine, and then didn't want to throw it away.

TLDR: can we really trust the work product of untrustworthy ("bad") people?

\---

I know it sounds rational to enjoy the works of "geniuses" even if they were
horrible people. I just have trouble with it.

Like, even using JavaScript which was invented by a homophobe, rubs me the
wrong way, as it were :) Even though I kinda like the language itself for
fun/easy hacking.

Or take Schopenhauer whose stuff about music is inspiring to me. Dude was a
gross incel though. Or take Wagner's anti-semitism.

Encountering facts like that just makes me wonder what other kinds of defects
or oversights could be hiding in their works. Belief in the virtue of punching
down just doesn't feel the same qualitatively as other vices like addictions
or whatever. It seems worse, "evil"?

I would trust the average drunken poet or painter or junkie musician more than
any iconoclast or figure who seems to be inspired by the muses of unfair
living for other people only. Excepting of course legitimate satire or
criticism. If you have to rely on extremist or violent ideas in order to
create something useful or beautiful, it actually comes off as pitiful.

I guess it's not that art needs to be harmonious or symmetrical or pure or
"good", but that to be trustworthy and useful for insight, I feel more
comfortable knowing that its creator was somehow loving and inclusive.

On top of it, I think if you are considered a genius that the bar must be
higher not to fail at basic respect for others. Geniuses are ostensibly smart
after all, so defects like discrimination, opposition to equal opportunity, or
any form of hatred (except maybe self-hatred) just feels disqualifying from a
user experience standpoint.

For every Feynman or Schopenhauer or Wagner there are tons of equal or better
geniuses who might not be in the right place at the right time, or don't make
a lot of noise, mainly because of inequality.

One of my favourite commentators, Stephen Fry, a gay man of Jewish descent,
even defended Wagner's art, which I find extremely conflicted. I wish I could
achieve that level of liberty in criticism.

All of that said, I think also that just creating anything at all comes with
some amount of good built-in. Nature is brutal too and it makes all kinds of
beautiful and useful things quite by accident. The difference in critique and
judgement only seems to arise if the creator is sentient.

~~~
harperlee
> Encountering facts like that just makes me wonder what other kinds of
> defects or oversights could be hiding in their works.

To me this sounds as if you now need to search for issues on a piece was
already deemed good; in a way this is a fallacy. Wagner was a great artist, is
his music antisemitic? Doesn’t sound logical. You could perhaps argue that
there might be some latent risk in his music expanding values that can create
a basis for antisemitism; to me all that sounds just like justification.

In the extreme: is a math theorem less true when done by awful people? There
must be some truth and some value on their works.

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devins
Casting such a broad net with the word "doubt" suggests that all questions are
argumentative. But in fact, almost none of the questions listed here are
necessarily expressions of doubt or the basis for an argument. They are
expressions of seeking understanding, which is a designer's job.

A designer who is not a question machine can only ever put lipstick on your
product, not really make it better.

~~~
devons
Ditto - these are exactly the questions that must be asked, frequently:

 _> he asked “one of the good ones, or one of the bad ones?” A designer on his
team — a “bad one” — asked too many questions. Questions like “Why are we
building this now?” “Are we sure this is the right problem to solve?” “Why
don’t we approach the problem in a different way?”_

Calling those questions 'doubts' just doesn't seem quite correct.

In the best teams I've worked with/on, designers [1] aren't afraid to
_frequently_ ask these questions. I have yet to see a case where that's been a
problem. Quite the opposite - far too often, there aren't enough deep /
'stupid' questions asked, especially at the outset & middle of projects.

[1] and everyone else on the team

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droptablemain
Measure twice; cut once.

