Signal Flow, Does it Apply to People?

One of the great things about technology is the logical, left brained process of signal flow. You start with a source which sends out a signal. The signal goes into another device which modifies the signal. The modified signal goes out and then into another device and so on.

When something seems off, you simply start at one end of the signal chain and work your way through the chain until you find the problem. It is usually simple, neat, and logical.

Does a similar process apply to people? I would love to hear your stories of trying to apply logic to people problems.

Let me relate a couple of recent stories where the technology was more like people and much less than logical.

First, I have been chasing a hum in one of the recording signal chains. A possible solution occurred to me which would entail using an optical connection between two devices. It should be simple, connect out to in, right? After a couple of hours trying all the logical connection possibilities, a couple of illogical connection ideas, and updating everything, I was forced to admit defeat. I posted an entry on the manufacturer's website asking for help. Come to find out, the sending device only sends info in one format. The receiving device only receives in a different format. How often do we communicate with each other in a similar way?

On another occasion, I was mixing Live Sound and I encountered a truly perplexing problem. The lead guitar was somehow bleeding through into the bass channel and layering on top of the bass sound. Not only was that occurring, but the guitar was also missing all of low frequency content and it was heavily distorted. Imagine hearing heavy metal guitar lines played through a tin can. After trying the normal solutions, I was able to reduce it, but I couldn't completely eliminate this odd phenomenon. I was also simply out of time. So I hid the sound in my mix as much as possible and tried to ignore it for the rest of the day. How often do we relate to each other similarly? We try to fix people a few times, but we quickly reach a point of simply trying to ignore the inexplicable.