How far can software architects get using a purely rational approach to software development?
From "Why Logic Often Takes a Backseat" (Business Week):
"The National Hockey
League and its players wrangle over a salary cap. The impasse causes
the season to be canceled. Everybody loses. What went wrong?
According to the new science of neuroeconomics, the explanation might
lie inside the brains of the negotiators. Not in the prefrontal cortex,
where people rationally weigh pros and cons, but deep inside, where
powerful emotions arise. Brain scans show that when people feel they're
being treated unfairly, a small area called the anterior insula lights
up, engendering the same disgust that people get from, say, smelling a
skunk. That overwhelms the deliberations of the prefrontal cortex. With
primitive brain functions so powerful, it's no wonder that economic
transactions often go awry. "In some ways, modern economic life for
humans is like a monkey driving a car," says Colin F. Camerer, an
economist at California Institute of Technology."
Perhaps far back in the anterior insula is the area where "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" lives?
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