Life is not a sanitized laboratory experiment. It’s rather a messy ebb and flow that makes scientific precision a futile pursuit. The scientific method has its rightful place in the universe, but human affairs are more artful than scientific.

Three uniquely human traits combine to suggest the superiority of intuition over precision when it comes to social contexts. The first is that human knowledge is never perfect – I can never truly know exactly what’s on your mind. The second is that much of human action is based on implicit drivers – you may not yourself have consciously examined your preferences. The final such element is that human ecologies are fluid and so capturing initial conditions is practically impossible.

And so, cutting corners to derive an approximate decision or solution which can be subsequently improved is much more effective than attempting the development of an exhaustive basis for action. It is because of this that strategy and problem solving in business is more an art than a science. It is also why any strategy is guaranteed to be imperfect.

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