Binaryism, False Dichotomy, Snake Oil, and the Princess Bride
After scaling “inconceivable” cliffs and besting a giant in a duel—The Man in Black finds himself sitting across the cunning and hubris laden Vizzini. Vizzini smugly sits across from the Man in Black and challenges him to a battle of wits. Naturally, the Man in Black agrees to this battle of the minds and places two goblets in-front of Vizzini and asks, “Where is the poison?” Vizzini conjectures, postulates, surmises, guesses, estimates, and runs through dozens of difference scenarios for why The Man in Black would put the poison in one glass versus the other. Vizzini confidently grabs a goblet, they toast, and Vizzini dies.
Unfortunately for Vizzini, he created a false dichotomy. He assumed one glass had poison in the wine and one glass did not. He did this out of a desire to create a binary situation. To create a win or lose scenario. Life or death. Right or wrong. Human’s like certainty—but unfortunately, the world isn’t all too keen on being certain.
The Man in Black asked Vizzini where the poison was—he never stated that one glass was poisoned and one was not—that was the false dichotomy presented. As a result—both glasses had poison in them and the Man in Black had developed a tolerance to this concoction over years of training. The moral of this story is that there are often more choices than the two that get commonly framed—this is especially true in the technical realm.
Technology is both exciting and excitable. It’s not uncommon to hear about some brilliant 12 year old that developed an app or engineered an algorithm that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. We like to believe that technology will swiftly “disrupt” and “transform” our lives in ways nobody could have predicted. We create an allure to technology that it can solve just about anything instantly. This is Snake Oil. Hyperbole and Snake Oil go together like peanut butter and jelly. The grander something is, the more diseases it miraculously cures and the more starving children it saves. Maybe it’s the middle child in me—but generally grand and too-good-to-be-true expectations are quickly followed with disappointment.
These great expectations create skepticism. And with Skepticism comes factionism. There are those that are believers, and there are those that are skeptics. There are those that believe Blockchain will be nothing less than the new dawning of the golden age of man, and then there are those that think it’s nothing but an overhyped crypto currency thingy that nobody really understands and who the heck is this Satoshi Nakamoto fellow anyway? What’s unfortunate in this—however—is that because of this binaryism, it creates bad brands for these technologies. In my opinion, Blockchain is not going to utterly transform our universe in the next 6 months. It is not—in my opinion—one of the most important and “disruptive” technologies of our age. With that said—it also isn’t a conniving crypto currency that is at best shrouded in mystery and at worse criminal. This technology is not binary (well that’s not true, fundamentally it is I suppose—but metaphors..). Blockchain can serve some pretty incredible purposes in the realm of digital identify sovereignty, medical records, voting, etc. Do I think it will rip asunder the financial establishments of the modern era? No. Is it going to cure cancer? Not directly. Is it going to cure hunger? Not directly. Unfortunately for Blockchain, it’s the Humpty Dumpy of last year—and it will take some time for all the kings men to put it back together again.
Be cautious of false dichotomies and establishing binary decision making because it makes things easier. Be cautious of the expectations and factions binaries create—and be very cautious of the resulting fallout if you identify one.
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