Six Elephants and a Blind Man

October 7, 2009 6:47 PM

Is there a fable or proverb that expresses the inverse of the blind men and the elephant?

In the famous fable, six blind men each think the elephant is something different. They do not realize that they are all talking about the same thing.

I want a fable or proverb that expresses the inverse: several people think they are talking about the same thing, but ultimately find that they are talking about completely different things.

I've experienced this most often as "the six programmers and the underspecified project." Each one thinks they are working on the same thing. They talk about it; it all makes sense; everyone is sure they are in sync; they are happily programming away.

How does it end? If they're lucky, eventually someone writes up a detailed spec, at which point everyone else says, "whoa, that's not what I'm working on." But then they go on to work out their differences and refine the spec. If they're not lucky... well, you can imagine.

I've also seen this situation arise as "six negotiators and an agreement," where the moment of truth comes in the form of a draft contract.

So. Is there any succinct expression of this pattern in Western culture? I'd love to be able to refer to it with a half dozen words, rather than three paragraphs that won't make sense to many people.

posted by alms to religion & philosophy (10 comments total)

It's not a fable, but how about 'talking past one another' or 'working at cross purposes?'
posted by jedicus at 7:05 PM on October 7

I really liked jefficator's post about this in a thread last week, though that isn't exactly what you're looking for.
posted by Benjy at 7:32 PM on October 7

No fables come to mind, but as for a succinct (albeit casual) expression, how about One Dialogue, Two Conversations? You can replace "two" with whatever number you need.
posted by cobwebberies at 7:35 PM on October 7

D'oh, scratch that suggestion - just noticed the "management" tag and I'm guessing you'd prefer an expression more suitable for the workplace.
posted by cobwebberies at 7:50 PM on October 7

cobwebberies: I'm not necessarily workplace focused. I'll take a look at the link.

jedicus: your suggestions don't capture the sense of optimism and unity that exists in the scenario I'm describing, prior to discovering the disconnect. When people are talking past one another or working at cross purposes, they have a sense that something's not right, even if they're not sure what it is.
posted by alms at 8:21 PM on October 7

There's the old saw about 6 engineers working on a desalination project, based on the 1 gallon samples of seawater given to each of them, only one of which contains a self-propelled biting organic item called a "fish." They argue a long time about whether they have 5 good raw material samples and a contaminated one, or whether the one with the fish is the only good sample they have. And they don't find out until the plant is finished, that dead fish in the solar evaporators make the fresh water coming out taste terrible.
posted by paulsc at 9:05 PM on October 7 [1 favorite]

Something in The Usual Error might ring a bell.
posted by divabat at 9:29 PM on October 7

You could make one up about blind auto mechanics thinking they were working on the same car, but actually separate identical cars, so when it's time to drive off, none of them actually work.
posted by delmoi at 2:29 AM on October 8

Have you seen this before?
posted by kimota at 6:57 AM on October 8 [2 favorites]

Japanese is rife with anecdotes like this. The language contains so many homophones that it's easy to misunderstand what someone else is saying. I recall one where a young man in college is corresponding with his father by telegram (which were written exclusively in phonetic characters), and each is misinterpreting what the other intends, but in a way that's consistent with the message that they previously sent, so each one has a consistent but message thread in his head that's unrelated to the other's.
posted by adamrice at 8:07 AM on October 8