Faith arrives in a great intuitive leap but departs in tiny and ever diminishing logical geisha steps.

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Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox, as related by Aristotle: “That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.”

This paradox is a lot more daunting before locomotion begins than after the goal is reached. If we simply reach the goal then turn around look back on the finite space we traversed, we see that it takes no more time to traverse one point than ten million. But to think about traversing each of ten million points can take a lot of time. And to report our arrival at each of these infinite midpoints — even if the report took ten-millionth of a second — makes progress impossible.

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Here is how it goes when the full burden of proof is placed on the new:

The question is asked: “Why the new? Shouldn’t we just follow best practices?”

And a minute into the answer another question is asked: “Why put all this effort into answering ‘Why the new?’ Shouldn’t we just follow best practices?”

And a minute into that answer yet another question: “Why put all this effort into answering ‘Why put all this effort into answering “Why the new?”‘ Shouldn’t we just follow best practices?”

And so on. Why(Why(Why(Why(Why(…))))).

x = Why (x)

It takes an infinite amount of time to justify the new.

In this way analysis paralysis is inflicted by those who seek to prevent by doing nothing new. The backbone of an idea is broken and re-broken into an infinite series of petty doubts and objections — as if the same could not be done with “best practices”. But a best practice is something that has already been tried and has produced an outcome, regardless of whatever objections can be produced. There might be an infinite number of questionable points between the start and finish, but these are irrelevant in light of the fact that the destination was in fact reached.

But the point here is not whether the points are there or not. The point is whether there is time to think this infinite number of points out before jumping to action, and the answer is indisputably “No.”

But there is another response to analysis paralysis that does not involve immobilization of the patient, and that is a counter-question: “Why not?” A million answers to that will be given, but they all amount to different ways to say: “We are spineless.”