8th meeting: Rephrasing the statements

The previous meeting we had made several observations which related to the fields that we have researched till now. These observations revolved mostly around things that we found interesting or that were somehow creating 'tensions' in related fields. By tensions we mean that there is a phenomenom in the field which almost seems to create a contradiction when being there. For example, the existence of certain heuristics seem to signify that people cannot reason fully rational when making a decision, while most methods for decision making make the assumption that people should act rationally. By using these observations we came up with several prototype statements. This week we tried to refine these statements and make them a bit more compelling or interesting.

What is a compelling statement? This first question arose after we experienced some difficulty making up statements. To resolve this difficulty we first thought of several criteria which are according to us necessary characteristics of a nice statement.
According to us a solution should be:

• Simple: It should explain what it is about in a simple sentence
• In between super clear and a bit vague: An utter vague statement does not explain enough and leaves people in confusion. However, a totally clear statement can be a bit boring. Sometimes vagueness can lead to questions or can be intriguing  .
• Possibility of validation: A statement should be able to be true or false.
• Compelling: It should stir something with the audience. A good statement will leave the audience with questions or will make them think about the topic.
• Specific: Explains one small thing good instead of a lot not so good.

Since we found already some prototype statements, this week was mostly about making them adhere to this criteria. This resulted in four different statements, each relating to a different field of interest.

• The less you know, the better decisions you can make/ problem-solving is the beneficial degree of ignorance.--> this statement relates to the topic of information overload. According to some theorists, people tend to make worse choices when exposed to more options. Since this idea goes into the general idea that knowledge is power, we thought it to be an interesting formulation of the problem
• Diversity is a needed characteristic for a solution to be stable --> This statement revolves around the property of chemicals to only reach a stable state when there are multiple different components.
• A solution is always an optimal situation, never an ideal --> This statement relates to the evolutionairy idea that a situation or state of things is always an optimal situation, instead of a perfect or ideal situation. According to us, this is interesting since we tend to think that solutions are always to make some ideal situation. If we take the idea of evolution theory serious, that there is no such thing as perfection, than we should also question the idea of the 'ideal situation'.
• Problem solving can be understood as increasing the control on a situation and become aware of the lack of control that you have --> This statement relates to heuristics and biases. Problem solving is seen as something that let people 'take control' of the situation and devise precise methods to 'rationally' solve them, However, contemporary theory depicts that we fall victim to all kinds of automated thinking patterns in our brain, that actually hinders us to think rationally (rationality according to rational choice theory, that is). We deem this interesting since this depicts a 'tension' between the general thought that we have control by thinking rational vs. theory that shows that we aren't as rational as we think we are.