> people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones.
Interesting theory, but I think something else is happening here.
If you have a bunch of people trying to solve a problem, the game is implicitly defined as "propose the best solution." After the first proposal, the game changes to "improve on the best solution so far."
This is something to keep in mind during interviews [1] for people on both sides of the table. If a candidate is silent for too long, propose a bad idea and ask them to improve on it. That gets them talking out loud, and you get more info to go on. If you're a candidate, you can start with a bad (yet probably obvious) solution and explain why it's bad. In the process of talking it through, you'll likely think of a better solution.
[1] The algorithm/coding one-big-question-over-45-minutes style of interviews commonly conducted by large software companies.
+1. I think the same. People, esp. smart people judge their ideas as not so good, and won't even mention it. When you bring up McDonalds, the person suddenly thinks: Hey, I didn't know the bar was that low.
NASA has spaceflight designs, and there are a lot of variables at play, so you can never really find "the best" mission.
So they create a reference mission, and then compare candidates to that. Something doesn't have to be strictly better (if there were something strictly better they probably would have found it), but you then understand the trade-offs you are making from it.
Interesting theory, but I think something else is happening here.
If you have a bunch of people trying to solve a problem, the game is implicitly defined as "propose the best solution." After the first proposal, the game changes to "improve on the best solution so far."
This is something to keep in mind during interviews [1] for people on both sides of the table. If a candidate is silent for too long, propose a bad idea and ask them to improve on it. That gets them talking out loud, and you get more info to go on. If you're a candidate, you can start with a bad (yet probably obvious) solution and explain why it's bad. In the process of talking it through, you'll likely think of a better solution.
[1] The algorithm/coding one-big-question-over-45-minutes style of interviews commonly conducted by large software companies.