[101011]

> You can either seek understanding or seek blame, but not both at once.

This is the first I've heard this statement (not necessarily the idea), but I found it incredibly beautiful in it's simplicity - thanks for sharing!

Are there origins to this that you're aware of? With some searching I found some adjacent thread lines to stoicism and Buddhism, but nothing quite the same.

[schneems]

I (think I) got it from ReinH on birdsite (before everyone left and moved to mastodon and Bluesky). He also gave a lot of talks on blameless postmortems and culture and general SRE stuff. This is one talk but not sure if it touches on the origins https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrsvLMqF1Q

[tome]

Is it even remotely appropriate to blame without first understanding? In which case, doesn't this perspective completely rule out the possibility of any appropriate blame?

[schneems]

> Is it even remotely appropriate to blame without first understanding?

Yet, blame is easy and satisfying and true understanding requires empathy and is hard and often unsatisfying.

The term "understanding" is fractal and infinite. Therefore Its 100% reasonable to find a stopping point and say "I blame you" (or, as you point out, otherwise, no one would ever be allowed to assign blame).

My comment is more about intent. The "seeking" word weights heavy. Many commenters are not seeking understanding, they are seeking satisfaction. Validation. The author of the post could have stopped much sooner if they were seeking blame, they could have chosen to build a caricature to heap more judgement upon. But they chose a more nuanced and exploratory path.

Even if the end result is blame or judgement. It's important that the purpose of the journey is clear. True understanding requires empathy, and it's really hard to empathize with someone you're actively trying to judge or vilify.