Things to teach my child: The XY Problem

I have been an avid reader since childhood. One of my favorite books was “Tarzan of the Apes” from Edgar Rice Burroughs. The book tells the story of a child whose parents were stranded deep in a jungle, without any means to return to a civilization. The couple gave birth to a child, Tarzan, in their cabin in the jungle. Soon after the birth, the couple died during an attack from the apes. Luckily for the child, one of the apes, Kala, decided to adopt the young human-child, in place of her dead ape-child. Thus, Tarzan, a child of man was destined to live amongst apes for years, until years later human civilization found him.

Cover of the book: Tarzan of the Apes

The book tells of various adventures he had with apes and the story of his years growing with apes. One of my favorite stories from the book is the tale of how Tarzan learned the art of making and using ropes for hunting.

Here’s how the story goes: Tarzan had learned to make ropes early on in his childhood, using twigs and stuff from the trees. He also learned to tie knots of these ropes over time. On one of the days, while playing with the ropes, he threw one of those over to his friend. The rope accidentally fell on the neck of his friend, an ape, and tied a noose. As the ape tried to run away from the rope, the noose tightened further, bringing him to a halt gasping for air. This gave him an idea to use the same kind of knot, noose, to capture animals.

Tarzan continued to experiment with the noose and over time learned to capture small animals. As he grew more ambitious, he tried to capture larger animals. On one of the days, he trapped a large saber in the noose. The saber struggled to find the attacker and quickly spotted the “white ape” on a branch in the tree above. The saber leaped to grab Tarzan, but by then Tarzan had moved to an even higher location. As the saber fell, the noose tightened and saber flipped on its back trying to free himself. As it got up, the saber realized that its problem was not the “ape”, but the slim thread around its neck going up the tree. It quickly found a way to break the rope. As soon as it did, it ran into the bush to freedom.

As a child, it always fascinated me that the saber entirely missed the rope and focused his attacks on Tarzan. How could it not notice the thing wrapping around your neck? Maybe it couldn’t because it was an animal, surely a human would’ve noticed the rope — I wondered.

Years passed. Over time, I realized the we, humans, are not too different from the saber. We also get too caught up in problems that instead of focusing on the root cause, we flail frantically to reduce the symptoms.

The XY Problem

Here’s the wikipedia definition:

The XY problem is a communication problem encountered in help desk and similar situations in which the real issue, X, of the person asking for help is obscured, because instead of asking directly about issue X, they ask how to solve a secondary issue, Y, which they believe will allow them to resolve issue X.

Or, put it more simply:

The XY Problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem.

In case of Tarzan’s tale, the saber made two errors in judgement. First, it assumed that its problem was Tarzan hiding atop the tree. Second, it concluded that the solution was to attack Tarzan by leaping towards him. Instead, to anyone else, it is evident that the problem was the rope and the solution was to break it.

These two definitions may lead you to think that XY Problem is all about how you present a problem to others. But it is more nuanced than that. Often we don’t ask the right questions to ourselves.

Knowledge of the XY problem helps remind ourselves that (a) we may want to search for the root cause of the problem before we search for a solution, and (b) even when we find a solution, we may want to consider the possibility of existence of a superior solution.