Having spent a lot of time on both the selling and buying side of "professional services" I can see that most successful sales pitches are built around giving the purchaser a sense of certainty of the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
I actually think that in many cases it is more difficult for someone who is knowledgeable to convey that sense of certainty because in so many technical situations the technical answer to simple questions is "it depends on the details of what you want to do". The "right" answer in a sales context is usually "yes, this will solve your problems" and worry about the reality once the contract is signed.
I think to some extent individuals that continue the process of learning into adulthood naturally become adverse to stating anything in completely concrete terms. Presumably part of this is from painful past experience, but also as one's depth of knowledge grows so does the realisation of just how much there is to know - even in a supposedly finite domain!
Yes, but be careful with this line of thought - it is a result of a person being aware that there are known-unknowns. That is why they avoid using concrete terms, because they know that they are ignorant about many things. But there are still things which this person will be unaware that they don't know.
I have always felt that Richard Feynmann's greatness devolved largely from the fact that he was better at identifying things that he didn't know than his colleagues. Where one person might develop a theory that works to explain a particular phenomenon, Feynmann would understand that this answer would just reveal new questions, so he would dig further than others.
Comments
Having spent a lot of time on both the selling and buying side of "professional services" I can see that most successful sales pitches are built around giving the purchaser a sense of certainty of the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
I actually think that in many cases it is more difficult for someone who is knowledgeable to convey that sense of certainty because in so many technical situations the technical answer to simple questions is "it depends on the details of what you want to do". The "right" answer in a sales context is usually "yes, this will solve your problems" and worry about the reality once the contract is signed.
I think to some extent individuals that continue the process of learning into adulthood naturally become adverse to stating anything in completely concrete terms. Presumably part of this is from painful past experience, but also as one's depth of knowledge grows so does the realisation of just how much there is to know - even in a supposedly finite domain!
Yes, but be careful with this line of thought - it is a result of a person being aware that there are known-unknowns. That is why they avoid using concrete terms, because they know that they are ignorant about many things. But there are still things which this person will be unaware that they don't know.
I have always felt that Richard Feynmann's greatness devolved largely from the fact that he was better at identifying things that he didn't know than his colleagues. Where one person might develop a theory that works to explain a particular phenomenon, Feynmann would understand that this answer would just reveal new questions, so he would dig further than others.