Delegation and trust

It is normal to ignore some things.
It is normal to want to do so safely; i.e. to be protected against the consequences of your not knowing certain things.
The lack of such a protection is a threat: otherwise, you might hear one day at the radio that some Chernobil blew up, and that it is too bad for you.

The means to implement such a protection is delegation and trust. One can trust people, or an organization.

By trusting, one assumes that the trustee will:

There is a hidden catch: I can define in advance neither the "domain" of the knowledge, nor what is the "proper way", because these are precisely what I want to ignore.

I.e. these are things that must be deferred.

What I have been witnessing and am worried about, is a desire to ignore even this: "I don't know what you are speaking about, and I still know better than you".

It shouldn't be hard to find people or organizations who will take the challenge of defining SCM. But you should not trust them...


Managing ignorance ToC
Marc Girod
Last modified: Mon Dec 31 16:41:50 EET 2001