I think it was Mark Twain who was first quoted as saying words to this effect, and if he didn’t he should have done. I heard an alternate way of expressing the same on the radio this morning, a commentator said something like, “some people ascribe to conspiracy theories, I ascribe more to cockup theories”. These two principles relate to a third, expressed to me by Phil Tee (who recently founded Njini, having set up Micromuse and Riversoft, but I digress), “the world is rarely as complicated as you think it is.”
For some reason it is a human trait to expect the worst of others, and to react with suspicion or look for hidden agendas. Most agendas aren’t that well hidden truth be told, so we could all save a lot of time getting on with solving our own problems rather than inventing new ones. If we apply the law of Tee as well, we might all achieve our objectives a little faster.
