A man named Pang Cong asked the king, “If someone claimed there was a tiger in the city, would you believe this person?”
The king didn’t think so. He would dismiss it as a rumor. Pang Cong then asked, “If two people came up to you and said they saw a tiger, would you believe them?”
The king would be curious.
Pang Cong wondered, “If three people said there was a tiger, would you believe all of them?”
The king nodded and agreed there was a tiger. Three people was large enough of a consensus. Pang Cong then pointed out the unlikeliness of a tiger running around a crowded city. Since enough people said so, a rumor sounded like the truth.
This is known as “three men make a tiger” or in Chinese, “san ren cheng hu.”
Trace the source of truth
Whenever I dealt with a system failure, my engineers would tell me the root cause of the issue. A frequent ticket would be “the site is down.” Not very helpful, and my job is to figure out the problem.
If one engineer said “Oh it was the database.” I wouldn’t jump on that, I would ask for the reasoning.
If three of my engineers claimed the database was the primary issue, I would tend to believe them… The proverb helps me counteract blind trust. Are they telling me the database is the issue because all 3 independently came to this conclusion? Or did one convince the other engineer, which in turn convinced the others?
The former lends far more strength to the claim. The latter means I need to investigate further.
If there’s claims of a tiger, there could be one. Or a little kitten.
My recommendation is to analyze your systems carefully so multiple engineers can’t unintentionally sway your view on a situation. If the database was truly on fire – is it timing out? Are there logs that the engineers are showing you?
Work with them to determine the likelihood of the situation.
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