Explaining the inexplicable

The complexity of the world unavoidably imposes a heavy burden on us that we face on a regular basis in everyday life: the choice between accepting something as a fact of life, even if we do not have a satisfactory explanation for it, or putting the time and effort (and thereby risk defeat) of trying to explain it. And keep in mind that the decision of which way to go already requires a non-negligible effort. This is probably why many of us find comfort in known places and established routines, where everything is explained and understood or, for a small fraction of events, it has been already established that they have to be accepted without an explanation, saving us the work of making a decision whether to inquire further or not. That is why it is called "the comfort zone". On the other hand, exposing ourselves to new situations requires us to so all over the classification effort again and, for the questions that we need to explain, also put the effort to do it. Just compare the feelings and the head scratching induced by a conversation with your current boss versus one with a potential new boss (a.k.a. a job interview): in the former, you know your counterpart from past experience so you will be able to quickly classify their reactions, whereas in the latter you will probably spend the whole time in a state of agitation and even devote some hours afterwards to "decipher" the outcome.

Over time experience (i.e. the memories of past decisions compounded with the observation of their results) makes the process much easier, because very frequently all we have to do is determine if a past decision path is applicable, sparing us the effort of thinking it over again and following instead the trodden path. However, if we do this a sufficiently high number of times the response starts to become automatic and we allow ourselves to forget all the trade-offs and rationales behind the subsequent steps. We have become masters of the situation, providing a prompt and reliable response but completely unable to justify it. We are suffering, as I mentioned yesterday, the "curse of expertise".

Photo: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

In fact, the talent required to explain a craft is radically different from the one required to master the craft. While the latter is a work of synthesis, integrating all your experiences in a unified set of working rules, the former is highly analytical, because we have to break down all the components of a well-established practice in order to explain or justify the contribution of each component and the trade-offs considered in the construction of the technique. In other words, the teacher of a masterly skill is twice a master: they are a great craftsman and a great teacher at the same time.

In my case, having a wide range of interests I tend not to get too confident on anything. Since I have a hard time focusing on any single project long enough I live in a constant state of insecurity about my competence on whatever task I undertake, so my inclination is to keep very present in my mind the reasoning behind each decision. I find this approach appealing in two different ways: on the one hand it allows to defend my mental process in front of others that might be more experienced than me, so that interacting with them can provide helpful feedback in future judgements; on the other, having the reasoning very present in my mind I can explain it to others who might know less about the subject, not only to teach them, but also to see if my reasoning is sound for a layman.

This afternoon I had a funny situation with Karen, where the ability to reciprocally explain our lines of thought has been very helpful. Some months ago she prepared a logo for a friend of hers, who is trying to set up a small bakery business. For now she makes decorated cakes and cupcakes mostly for the birthday parties of her friends' children, but she wanted to have anyway a bit of corporate image, so Karen drew, on a pink and lilac-striped background, some chocolate-doughnut-shaped font. Yesterday, she showed me how the logo was a bit week on a white page and I almost immediately replied "Yes, you could contour the whole logo in chocolate color so that the lilac and pink do not clash with the white of the page". It turns out that she had replied exactly the same words to her friend just a few minutes ago (she showed me the message in WhatsApp).

Of course, this is not a simple coincidence: anyone with a minimum sensitivity for aesthetics knows what a color gamut is, and the dark brown of the chocolate was already in the palette of the logo and it was dark enough to configure the boundary, so there was no need to extend the palette. And with similar explanation, it is not surprising that we reached similar conclusions. The funny part is that both of us are equally focused on not only providing good answers but also explaining how we obtained them. What is your situation? Do you focus on just getting the best results or do you feel like me the need to be able defend your decisions, even if that implies a longer and more effortful reasoning? Comments are, as usual, welcome below. Have a nice weekend.