Get Schwifty

I was watching the “Get Schwifty” episode from Rick and Morty for the nth time yesterday and unexpectedly, I came across a parallel between what happens in the episode to what I observe usually when dealing with some tickets when I’m working. If you’ve not seen Rick and Morty and are planning to watch it, please stop reading this blog as there are some spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

In this particular episode, earth is visited by Cromulons, a race of giant heads (when I say giant, I mean planet size) whose sheer gravitational force is enough to wreck havoc on earth. During this helpless state, many people on earth start praying to these giant heads in hope of being on their good side. Immediately, the heads appear to be pleased and many people believe that it was because of the praying.

However, in reality, Cromulons only visited earth to find a hit song for their music reality show. They were pleased not because of the praying but because of a song that Rick and Morty performed on another location. Since most people were oblivious to this fact, they assumed a cause and effect relationship for what happened. Cause being the act of praying and the effect being pleasing Cromulons.

The parallel that I have observed here is that immediately after we’ve released an update, many people who reach out to us at our helpdesk think that the issue they are facing is because of the update that they have downloaded. However, in most cases, the reality is that the update has nothing to do with the issue a particular user is facing. To support this fact, even the number of tickets we get do not increase after an update. This probably is the case for all the apps out there.

So the next time you update your Newton app and something untoward happens, don’t blame it on the poor update. It might be due to something else entirely. Correlation does not imply causation.