I suppose that I'm working my way back to this problem/solution and identification that Cross et al. were on about in "Knowing What We Know", but I think I might be going even more fundamental with the concept of what we know and how it relates to problem solving.

As I recall, Cross et al. were concerned with knowing what other people's knowledge is to determine whether or not they will be helpful to us in solving our problems. I'm more interested here in whether or not I have enough knowledge of a problem to identify it and state it stuch that I can figure out whether or not someone else's knowledge will be required. It seems to me that a lot of what goes on is somewhat red herring-ish as we go about problematizing things. In other words, when we look for problems, we will find them, but are they really problems?

I have a friend, and I think I've mentioned this somewhere before, who frequently winds up with two drinks in his hands. Invariably someone quips about his drinking problem (two hands; one mouth). My friend invariably replies, "It not a drinking problem, it's a drinking opportunity" and proceeds to down one of the beverages.

Well, I think I've digressed far enough from the point, but I do find the linked article above interested for the very fact that we try our best to normalize things, to make some sense out of them or bring them back to our own grids of intelligibility. As such, gibberish spit out by computer makes perfect sense, particularly when we are in an environment that breeds fear of not knowing answers, and thus fear of asking questions.