Time Blindness

The following is from a converstation I overheard two days ago:

(Some specifics have been modified to protect the guilty)

"Hey you know what we need is a thingamabob that can turn widgets into ultra widgets by changing the angle of the doohicky!"

"Yeah that would be great, but I tried that three years ago and they don't make it anywhere. Don't waste your time. You have a lot more important things to do."

"But it could increase our profit 200%? I know I can find it."

"I'm telling you its not out there. I would have found it. Forget about it."

You have probably been in this same situation when you have moved into a new situation and worked in close proximity with someone who has been doing similar work for a long time. Now if you do whatever it is anyway and it works you will have embarassed someone senior to you (read this as "made an enemy"), and if you don't you have taken the first step into the rut that everyone else has dug. The logic error that is inherent in this story is time blindness.

All things change over time. There is nothing static in the world. Everything from technology to the location of land masses to the words in a dictionary always have and always will be in flux. Forgetting this fact can lead to serious errors in judgement. Often elaborate structures of belief are built on the fragile evidence of one attempt far in the past. Simply questioning whether things might have changed over time can collapse the whole, and open new worlds of possibility and inquiry. Give it a try sometime and let me know how it works out.