My mantra when it comes to the design process – and landscape design in particular – is you need to keep exploring. Don’t settle for a ‘good’ idea you develop early. Keep pushing to get to other deeper, more interesting, more unique options.
This is a core part of the landscape design process I outline on my site and in my ebook ‘The Garden Design Process’. It’s what I was taught and practiced, and something I believe anyone can follow and learn.
Reading a blog about (of all things) Artificial Intelligence, I came across the passage below in a post. It seemed to outline a lot of the points I outlined above, so I wanted to expand upon it in a specific landscape design context.
The blog is called LessWrong 2.0, and is predominantly a collection of posts by Eliezer Yudkowsky. He’s not a designer in the traditional sense, though some might argue differently. He focuses on rationality, biases in human nature and, as I mentioned, artificial intelligence.
This post talks about something called ‘The Third Alternative’. It explains why it is useful to expand our options first. And why some people are more attached to their proposed solution, rather than just a better solution.
Note: It can be a weird, challenging read. I’ve edited to key components I want to touch on. Enjoy.
The Third Alternative
“… The best is the enemy of the good. If the goal is really to help people, then a superior alternative is cause for celebration—once we find this better strategy, we can help people more effectively. But if the goal is to justify a particular strategy by claiming that it helps people, a Third Alternative is an enemy argument, a competitor.
Modern cognitive psychology views decision-making as a search for alternatives. In real life, it’s not enough to compare options, you have to generate the options in the first place. On many problems, the number of alternatives is huge, so you need a stopping criterion for the search. When you’re looking to buy a house, you can’t compare every house in the city; at some point you have to stop looking and decide.
But what about when our conscious motives for the search—the criteria we can admit to ourselves—don’t square with subconscious influences?
When we are carrying out an allegedly altruistic search, a search for an altruistic policy, and we find a strategy that benefits others but disadvantages ourselves—well, we don’t stop looking there; we go on looking. Telling ourselves that we’re looking for a strategy that brings greater altruistic benefit, of course.
But suppose we find a policy that has some defensible benefit, and also just happens to be personally convenient? Then we stop the search at once! In fact, we’ll probably resist any suggestion that we start looking again—pleading lack of time, perhaps. (And yet somehow, we always have cognitive resources for coming up with justifications for our current policy.)
Beware when you find yourself arguing that a policy is defensible rather than optimal; or that it has some benefit compared to the null action, rather than the best benefit of any action.
False dilemmas are often presented to justify unethical policies that are, by some vast coincidence, very convenient. Lying, for example, is often much more convenient than telling the truth; and believing whatever you started out with is more convenient than updating…
To do better, ask yourself straight out: If I saw that there was a superior alternative to my current policy, would I be glad in the depths of my heart, or would I feel a tiny flash of reluctance before I let go? If the answers are “no” and “yes”, beware that you may not have searched for a Third Alternative.
Which leads into another good question to ask yourself straight out: Did I spend five minutes with my eyes closed, brainstorming wild and creative options, trying to think of a better alternative? It has to be five minutes by the clock, because otherwise you blink—close your eyes and open them again—and say, “Why, yes, I searched for alternatives, but there weren’t any.” Blinking makes a good black hole down which to dump your duties. An actual, physical clock is recommended.
And those wild and creative options—were you careful not to think of a good one? Was there a secret effort from the corner of your mind to ensure that every option considered would be obviously bad?”
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Unpacking the Passage…
So… there were a few points in the passage I’d like to pull out and highlight. His focus is on cognitive processes when determining a policy or approach to something. I think you can substitute concept, idea or even design and still learn from it.
“If your goal is to really help people, then the superior alternative is cause for celebration… help more effectively”.
I think of this in terms of choices in our designs. Especially when it comes to having designs critiqued. It’s easy to become attached to something we create. But if a better strategy or solution comes along, we need to recognise it.
“On many problems the number of alternatives is huge, so you need a stopping criterion for the search”.
You can see how this lines up with my design approach. The combinations and ideas are infinite. Knowing what you want, and having specific criteria, will help you stop searching. By searching I mean not only looking for ideas, but also looking for component/material/colour combinations.
“…suppose we find a policy that has some defensible benefit, and also just happens to be personally convenient? The new stop the search at once! In fact, we’ll probably resist any suggestion that we start looking again – pleading lack of time, perhaps.”
In designing, it’s easy to come up with something that looks like it will work fine. It takes discipline to push beyond it. To really explore more options.
“To do better, ask yourself straight out: If I saw that there was a superior alternative to my current policy, would I be glad in the depths of my heart, or would I feel a tiny flash of reluctance before I let go? If the answers are “no” and “yes”, beware that you may not have searched for a Third Alternative.”
Again, you may be more attached to some ideas than others. Or some designs than others. Don’t let that limit your searching and creative exploring. Keep looking for that ‘Third Alternative’.
As I said, it is a strange article. But I think it ties in nicely to many of the ideas I’ve raised (and will continue to raise).
Keep searching. Have criteria to help define what you are looking for. And when you can stop. Try to keep in mind; you are looking for the ‘Third Way’.