Love the Problem, Not Your Solution

If asked about the most common pitfall that trips up inexperienced philosophers, close to the top of my list would be: Falling in love with your solution. Management advisor Ash Maruia has previously labeled this pre-disposition for the solution as the “Innovator’s Bias” and the following (and previous) words are mostly copied verbatim from one of his recent blog posts (2017) – I am trying to find a middle ground between plagirism and extensive quotation. According to Maruia, this so-called innovator bias is a sneaky troll:  rearing it’s ugly head, not just during the early stages of research, but thorough its lifecycle, often when you least expect it. At each step, the most insightful theories come from a deep understanding of problems before solutions.

Ideas are cheap

When we first get hit by an idea, this is what we most clearly see and what we spend most of our energy towards. But most initial hypotheses fail — not because we fail to develop them into full-fledged theories or because we fail to find enough arguments in their favor, but because, despite developing such theories and arguments (i.e., by defending our idea) we fail to solve an actual philosophical problem.

All your initial energy should be channeled towards gaining better understanding of a substantial philosophical problem, not towards acquiring more resources to build out your own proposal.

So how do you avoid forgetting about the problem?

Start by recognizing that your true job as a philosopher is to solve problems or explain phenomena, not to develop your own ideas. Look for a problem others are trying to solve and study how they are getting it done. If the job is adequately getting done, that’s bad news for you because it’s hard to displace an existing solution with an alternative proposal. If on the other hand, you find the job isn’t getting done “well enough”, that’s great news for you. The obstacles or problems getting in the way of the problem being adequately solved is where you’ll find space for making a valuable contribution.

Once you understand the problem, you must also be able to understand what would it take for a solution to be “better” than the one already available.

Avoiding Failure

"Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion."

Francis Bacon

We spend so much time trying to avoid failure that we fail to realize that: failing is a necessary pre-condition for breakthrough.

If you develop an argument only to validate what you already expected to hold, you can pat yourself on the back, but there was no breakthrough. It is only through the exploration of the unexpected that you achieve breakthrough. Breakthrough insights are often hidden inside failed hypotheses.

Failing is par for the course when we do research, because research is about trying new things.

One Final Takeaway

We pay a lot of lip service to perseverance and grit, but perseverance and grit will get you only so far if you are simply trying to brute-force your solution.

Starting with a solution is like building a key without knowing what door it will open. You can try testing your key on lots of doors or you can start with a door you want to open. When you fall in love with the problem, versus your solution, you start building keys to doors that actually take you places.