Taxonomy of a conference or: on the distillation of knowledge

A researcher has an idea. He shares it with his colleagues, they start brainstorming together and present it in a “geek-only” seminar.

A journalist stumbles upon the idea. He understands little and nothing about it, but writes a column about it because he is “the one who deals with innovation” and interviews the “expert”.

The “expert”, who has been answering whatever question in the same way for thirty years, explains to him that there are also “legal problems”.

A legal scholar reads the journalist’s article and the “expert” statement, understands about it ? even less, but decides that he “knows best” and organizes the conference “legal aspects of XXX”.

A politician is invited to the conference. Until a minute before, he was dealing with something else, but he understands that this can lead to votes. He decides to jump on the subject and invites the legal scholar, the expert and the journalist (but not the researcher who had the idea) to join the “steering committee for XXX” – which worth nothing, but looks “cool” – and presents a bill.

Meanwhile, the researcher notices that his idea had some flaws. He tries to contact the journalist, the expert, the legal scholar and the politician, but nobody answers him. They can’t admit that they didn’t know s…omething.

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