Ian M Rountree

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Video Saturdays – Outcomes vs Effects

December 11, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

There are two ways to approach anything:

Either build a system so simply that there are no obvious flaws, or build a system with such complexity that there are no obvious flaws.

Take a gander at this Rube Goldberg machine.

It pours a bottle of beer into a mug. Simple, right? But that’s the outcome – a full glass. The operations are high in count, complex in their appearance, and all very precise in their execution. They all contribute to a simple outcome – so most of them are, really, unnecessary, aren’t they?

But what if we consider their explicit value, rather than just the explicit outcome? You can hear the people laughing – you might laugh yourself. You’ll never drink that mug of beer, but you can still enjoy the pouring of it in a way that far outstrips just watching someone fill their cup.

There’s value there… Right?

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