Difference between revisions of "974: The General Problem"

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[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

Revision as of 21:44, 13 September 2012

The General Problem
I find that when someone's taking time to do something right in the present, they're a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they're a master artisan of great foresight.
Title text: I find that when someone's taking time to do something right in the present, they're a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they're a master artisan of great foresight.

Explanation

This comic features Cueball sitting down to a meal and requesting that an off screen person pass him the salt. The off screen person (OSP) then proceeds to solve the problem...generally. Cueball's implied/specific request was "Can and will you pass me the salt immediately?" However the OSP begins to solve the salt problem generally, without regard for time, context, the specific heat of the meal, or what some would call common sense. For the next 20 minutes, while Cueball nibbles at his bland, cooling meal, the OSP works on a device that will pass condiments more quickly than possible by the OSP. The problem, obviously, is that building then using the machine is much slower than just manually passing the salt. This is why in the title-text Randall states that when someone uses a lot of time to do an easy task when the task is needed to be done quickly he considers them a perfectionist (since they are unable to do something inefficiently even if it satisfies the other person) with no ability to prioritize. Yet if the "perfectionist" were to have completed this machine previously, he would be impressed when the creation passed him the salt. The OSPs argument for taking so much time is that in the end if he were to add up all the time he saved by no longer needing to pass condiments it will equal more time than it took to build the machine, and thus in the long term he will have saved time and solved the general problem of passing condiments.

This situation would be akin to a major website performing maintenance during peak hours instead of waiting till traffic was lower. From the perspective of the person trying to check their email, the upgrade would seem ill-timed and unnecessary. However if the person were to instead log in not till the following day, he would think the upgrade was masterful and full of great insight.

Transcript

[A person sits at a table, eating a meal.]
Person: Can you pass the salt?


[The person pauses, a bite of food on his fork, silently.]


[The person still has fork in mid-air.]
Person: I said--
Off-screen Person: I know! I'm developing a system to pass you arbitrary condiments.
Person: It's been 20 minutes!
OSP: It'll save time in the long run!


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Discussion

He should have waited until after the meal to start organizing the condiments. --Jimmy C (talk) 18:47, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

There is a later comic that deals with how much time can be spent developing a system to deal with recurring time-taking chores (if that sentence made sense). I may find the number and enter it in, but I may spend time doing this generally first. --Quicksilver (talk) 18:09, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Title text could be augmented with "Hindsight is 20/20." Krishnanp (talk) 18:46, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

This looks suspiciously like nerd sniping to me..... Dontknow (talk) 04:58, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Edit Summary, Apr 2015

system ≠ machine; the OSP is not making a machine 108.162.221.248 05:18, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I think the Title Text gives the real meaning of the comic - if nobody ever TOOK the TIME to think a problem through and create a new, better solution then nothing would have ever come of our civilization - we'd still be picking up stones to crack a nut. Yet somebody took a time to sculpt a piece of rock and kept it with him, then added a stick as a handle, dug and melted swamp iron to create metallic tool etc. Yet the most instant and obvious solution in the moment would be to keep using any rock you seen near by. Every sys.admin knows how often it seems easier to do stuff instantly, by hand, and get it over with, one often has to force the thought that this situation keeps coming up so I should probably take the time and automate it, hence creating technological advancement. That's how anything gets thought out and built. 141.101.81.80 11:22, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

By far my favorite part of this is the fork not moving between panels, implying that he sat perfectly still for a full twenty minutes.

and, he only asked for the salt again after 20 minutes! 172.69.71.10 14:05, 23 November 2021 (UTC)BUmpf