I never understood why the joke is on the drunk guy in this metaphor.
If you dropped your keys and they're either under the lamppost or fallen down the drain, you should start by looking under the lamppost even if you think it's more likely they're in the drain.
If you're debugging something and the problem is either in the nice easy documented, logged, instrumented system or in a more intractable one, you should look in the easy one first. If you're right, you'll solve it quicker, if you're wrong, less time wasted.
chrisweekly · 3h ago
FWIW, the classic metaphor implies the keys could be almost anywhere (not just either under the lamppost or down a nearby drain).
rcxdude · 2h ago
The original joke implies the keys are almost certainly not under the lamp-post (the drunk dropped them some way down the street)
lo_zamoyski · 1h ago
But that's not the metaphor. You've added a constraint to it.
The metaphor concerns bias and the error it presupposes and the fallacious conclusions it produces.
"Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice." [0] Physicists who conclude that only the quantifiable exists are the paradigmatic example. Their methods select for the quantifiable, so how could they find anything else using them?
jeffery pfeffer talks about the triad of performance, credentials, and relationships in one of his books[1] and it extends the metaphor, where a lot of independent consultants are super high performers, but may lack an advanced credential that opens the door for most management roles, or don't have the relationships in their business to close deals so they become subcontractors to people with those relationship management skills.
every industry, company, or field weights these differently. most institutions rank actual individual performance very low relative to credentials and relationships, where something like sales would be all performance and relationships and they don't care what your other bona fides are. if you didn't go to an ivy school, a master's is usually needed to get hired as an exec, but not to be a trouble shooter, etc..
know what your career path values and adapt and invest in the triad accordingly. people who gripe about certifications and book-larnin' are usually indexed on the performance and relationship fields where they can leverage their outlier skills there, whereas being still pretty average with a higher credential score creates opportunity and career momentum. may the odds ever be in your favour.
If you dropped your keys and they're either under the lamppost or fallen down the drain, you should start by looking under the lamppost even if you think it's more likely they're in the drain.
If you're debugging something and the problem is either in the nice easy documented, logged, instrumented system or in a more intractable one, you should look in the easy one first. If you're right, you'll solve it quicker, if you're wrong, less time wasted.
The metaphor concerns bias and the error it presupposes and the fallacious conclusions it produces.
"Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice." [0] Physicists who conclude that only the quantifiable exists are the paradigmatic example. Their methods select for the quantifiable, so how could they find anything else using them?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
every industry, company, or field weights these differently. most institutions rank actual individual performance very low relative to credentials and relationships, where something like sales would be all performance and relationships and they don't care what your other bona fides are. if you didn't go to an ivy school, a master's is usually needed to get hired as an exec, but not to be a trouble shooter, etc..
know what your career path values and adapt and invest in the triad accordingly. people who gripe about certifications and book-larnin' are usually indexed on the performance and relationship fields where they can leverage their outlier skills there, whereas being still pretty average with a higher credential score creates opportunity and career momentum. may the odds ever be in your favour.
[1] Pfeffer's "Power" https://www.amazon.com/Power-Some-People-Have-Others/dp/0061...