Tom Kyte : “In Search Of The Truth”

Tom Kyte : "In Search of the Truth - Or Correlation Is Not The Same As Causation"

"... I have two guiding principles with regards to Oracle. One is that every day, each and every day, I learn something new about Oracle I did not know the day before. Each and every day. Maybe that is more of a fact than a principle but that is the way I approach the database. That mindset helps me keep my mind open to someone correcting something I’ve said.

The other one of my guiding principles is that I ask for proof from everyone (yes, it can be annoying, it carries over into my personal life as well. Ask my wife and kids). Is this a scientific/mathematical proof as in “prove the square root of 2 is not a rational number”? No, and it never has been. What I need to see is proof as in evidence. When I have a conjuncture, I try to rationalize, hypothesize why that conjecture might be true. Then I provide supporting evidence. Why do I do this? Is it because I can generate written material faster? No, not a chance. I could produce 10 times the material I do now if I skipped the illustrative examples. If I were to produce paragraphs instead of pages, I could be much more apparently productive.

Or would I be? Actually, what I have found time and time again is that the only thing I would accomplish would be to be wrong more often than I already am. When you rely on 'expert' advice, especially when you buy a book, or when you read a paper on the internet authored by a name known in the industry -- you expect more. You expect to be able to have a certain level of trust in the contents. You expect that the information, the advice being passed to you is more than likely "correct". 

I know of only one way to accomplish that. That is to provide some “proof”, evidence. Some factual reasoning why what I believe to be true most likely is. And present it in a fashion that lets the entire world look at it and say “I understand”. Or, look at it and say “yeah, but…..”. I love “yeahbuts”, I learn more from “yeahbuts” than anything else. The "yeahbuts" out there look at the cause I am talking about, my hypothesized effects, my reasoning and say “yeah but we could accomplish it like this couldn’t we and it would be even better”. That, that makes my day.

Experts that offer advice without supporting evidence are in my opinion the danger. The advice might be actually good advice – when you understand the caveats that go with it ...

... I truly believe that people wanting to provide information should back it up.  Give evidence.  Yes, I know, we are all busy people and providing the evidence is “hard”, but if you want to be a published author, if you want people to accept your advice, you have to go that extra mile.  The information you use should be real, not made up.  You’ll find you make far far fewer errors that way.  You should be able to explain everything in your findings – not most things – and you cannot just ignore things that don’t fit your hypothesis ...

... And, even better, if the truth changes in the future, we have the test case waiting in the wings to tell us that.  If all we had were experts saying “do this, it is very good”, well, we would not."