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  "title": "The Lost Discipline of Fault Isolation",
  "subtitle": "Modern IT can assemble an incident call faster than it can narrow a problem.",
  "thesis": "Troubleshooting is the disciplined reduction of uncertainty through observation, bounded hypotheses, meaningful tests, and explicit elimination of possible causes.",
  "abstract": "A technical-leadership essay on fault isolation as the disciplined reduction of uncertainty, from symptom definition and known-good boundaries through falsifiable hypotheses, meaningful tests, elimination, and evidence-based escalation.",
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    "name": "Tony Malott",
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  "dates": {
    "created": "2026-07-14",
    "updated": "2026-08-20",
    "published": "2026-08-20"
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    "troubleshooting",
    "diagnostic-reasoning",
    "incident-response",
    "systems-thinking",
    "technical-leadership"
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    "kicker": "Diagnostic discipline",
    "orientation": "Technical maturity begins by making an unknown problem progressively smaller.",
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