I certainly won't try to claim all XY problems have this form, but it does seem to account for a lot of them. | [reply] |
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Actually, the first three of your quotes (at least) are very much the situation I'm talking about.
But I'm guessing there's some semantic hairsplitting going on here that I'm not sure is worth trying to track down.
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Some people, when they have a problem with X say,
"I know! I'll use Y..."
Now they have two problems.
So somebody has a problem with X, decide they want to use Y, and have a second problem with that. The quote ends there, but obviously there might have been a direct solution to X or a solution Z that is better suited and/or easier to implement which they wouldn't have had a problem with, giving one problem to solve instead of two. Aside from the humorous aspect, the quote clearly implies one should consider solutions to X that are different from Y.
So how does that not describe an XY Problem? Is the "you didn't tell us about X" really such an important part of the concept?
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