If This, Then That

* first published on medium

Learning the basics of computers changed how I viewed the world.

No, really.

They seem like this magical thing that works somehow, and our media and cultural fears play highly on that magical feature, but when you break it down it’s really quite understandable and simple. Computers have a language, and there are rules to language. There are rules that computers [and technology] operates within, and that’s just that. If you take away the idea that it’s magic, and try to understand, it becomes simple.

My first and most important lesson in computer science came with the understanding of “IFTT”. “If this, then that” refers to conditional statements [conditional constructs] which are features of a programming language, and they perform different actions depending on whether a condition equals true or false. IE: IF user clicks X, display Y. [this is for comprehension only, not true programming].

When I learned about the concept of, “if this, then that”, I was able to structure out problems I was facing in my business. I was able to easily diagnose when problems were tech, or user error, because I understood the basic framework of the problem. I was able to listen to problems, and frame them within what I knew to be true about computer logic. It gave me this magical ability to solve problems for my team — intelligent people —some of whom simply did not have strong computer literacy skills. For longer than I’d like to admit, this made me perceive them as less capable.

Something that I reference a lot, but not fully for it’s intended usage, is the Dunning-Kruger effect. Essentially, “a cognitive bias in which people of low-ability mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is, as low-ability people do not have the ability to recognize their lack of ability”. As the two psychologists explained, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.” And this is where the interest is for me.

The miscalibration of the highly competent.

I’ve seen it often in my work with highly competent individuals not being able to grasp why another highly competent individual doesn’t understand “X”, without being able to get the distance to evaluate the reasoning why.

How did you come about the knowledge you are trying to share? Was it always inherent to you?

From the wiki article “Moreover, competent students tended to underestimate their own competence, because they erroneously presumed that tasks easy for them to perform were also easy for other people to perform”. Well first, let me tell you this statement is not more true anywhere but with programmers [computer people in general, really]. And second, let me tell you how difficult it seems to be for competent people to realize this understanding.

I’ve watched my team struggle to communicate with each other for various reasons all relating to this main theme, “they erroneously presumed that tasks easy for them to perform were also easy for other people to perform,”. I’ve struggled immensely with this myself —finding myself furious when something didn’t happen the way that I thought it would, because whomever I had tasked with the project did not have the same knowledge that I did, and thus, did not come to the same decision that I would have. More so, the realization that that didn’t make them stupid.

It is impossible to know all the factors that brought your teammate to you, how they view the world through their filter, and if they have the same basis of education as you, but you can likely tell and recall that they are a fellow intelligent soul. Knowing this, evaluate your own base knowledge — and your empathy levels.