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Ah, those assumptions!
Feb. 22nd, 2012 11:17 amI don't recall where I first heard the conventional wisdom that goes around packaged as "When you assume, you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'," but I've heard it countless times over the years.
Increasingly, I've developed this feeling that the spirit of this observation is analogous to what the Jargon File calls a "backronym," which occurs when a phrase is waved around in public, purporting to be the expansion for something that was never an acronym in the first place (the classic example of this is "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" offered as the expansion for the name of the BASIC programming language). In short, it reeks of having been "made to fit."
By analogy, I think someone at some time decided to come up with a pithy way of illustrating how "assumptions backfire," and could think of nothing better than a formulation with 'ass', 'u', and 'me'. The result is pathethic, in my opinion, but not as pathetic as "Keep it simple, stupid!" as an expansion of the KISS principle of presentation design (FWIW, my backronym for KISS is "Keep it short and sweet!").
But I digress.
The big giveaway, for me, is how this rather clichéd bromide on assumptions is the only piece of such advice I can think of that takes the form of something one's colleague (or, more likely, one's boss) would say. As a result, the phrase is awkward, to say the least, and (ahem!) assumes that the person expressing it would never, ever fall into the trap of making an assumption. In the final analysis, conventional wisdom that only applies to others would appear to—at best—defeat its own purpose.
That said, the provenance of the expression does not change the fact that assumptions do have a tendency to backfire, which suggests that testing said assumptions is a laudable undertaking.
So, just out of curiosity, I decided to find out whether the sandglass I used yesterday is actually (as I had assumed) a three-minute timer.
As it turns out, it isn't. I timed the glass—twice—and confirmed that it exhausts its sand at a few seconds short of five minutes.
Live and learn!
Cheers...
Increasingly, I've developed this feeling that the spirit of this observation is analogous to what the Jargon File calls a "backronym," which occurs when a phrase is waved around in public, purporting to be the expansion for something that was never an acronym in the first place (the classic example of this is "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" offered as the expansion for the name of the BASIC programming language). In short, it reeks of having been "made to fit."
By analogy, I think someone at some time decided to come up with a pithy way of illustrating how "assumptions backfire," and could think of nothing better than a formulation with 'ass', 'u', and 'me'. The result is pathethic, in my opinion, but not as pathetic as "Keep it simple, stupid!" as an expansion of the KISS principle of presentation design (FWIW, my backronym for KISS is "Keep it short and sweet!").
But I digress.
The big giveaway, for me, is how this rather clichéd bromide on assumptions is the only piece of such advice I can think of that takes the form of something one's colleague (or, more likely, one's boss) would say. As a result, the phrase is awkward, to say the least, and (ahem!) assumes that the person expressing it would never, ever fall into the trap of making an assumption. In the final analysis, conventional wisdom that only applies to others would appear to—at best—defeat its own purpose.
That said, the provenance of the expression does not change the fact that assumptions do have a tendency to backfire, which suggests that testing said assumptions is a laudable undertaking.
So, just out of curiosity, I decided to find out whether the sandglass I used yesterday is actually (as I had assumed) a three-minute timer.
As it turns out, it isn't. I timed the glass—twice—and confirmed that it exhausts its sand at a few seconds short of five minutes.
Live and learn!
Cheers...
