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I love this. Short and concise, this combines two of my most favorite mindshares. 1. "Hackers and Painters" – I stumbled across in late 2004 at the Technical

I love this. Short and concise, this combines two of my most favorite mindshares. 1. "Hackers and Painters" – I stumbled across in late 2004 at the Technical University of Vienna's (excellent) bookstore. Reading it changed my life. 2. "Ideas are the Enemy of Observations (2012)" – Just Three months ago yamrzou shared this gem of a text. For me, it has become the most meaningful post ever shared on HN. "How to get new ideas" seems to fit snuggly right in the middle :) [^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33355094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33355094

borroka 4y ago
I read the essay and found it reasonably entertaining, but not exactly in a good way. What exactly is the writer trying to accomplish? I didn't get it, but maybe it's about having an "unbiased" look at the world, probably/maybe in the context of inferring causality, not just for lolz. The essay writer's main problem is that they are attempting to infer causality from observation or to find an explanation of the data that justifies or supports their worldview. After all, "why?", "how curious", "I wonder how that happens" are powerful questions and statement that have led to countless inventions, investigations, novels, and pleasurable, although at times frustrating, time. I would recommend something more scientific: observe the world (data/observations), develop a hypothesis that is hard in Platt's sense (meaning it should be discriminating) and test the hypothesis on new data and observations, where new means not used to develop the hypothesis to be tested. And they will see that they should not only collect observations that describe the world, but develop and test hypotheses that can test the mechanisms that lead to those observed facts. Sometimes this is possible, sometimes it is not. But it is always entertaining.

borroka 4y ago

I read the essay and found it reasonably entertaining, but not exactly in a good way. What exactly is the writer trying to accomplish? I didn't get it, but maybe it's about having an "unbiased" look at the world, probably/maybe in the context of inferring causality, not just for lolz. The essay writer's main problem is that they are attempting to infer causality from observation or to find an explanation of the data that justifies or supports their worldview. After all, "why?", "how curious", "I wonder how that happens" are powerful questions and statement that have led to countless inventions, investigations, novels, and pleasurable, although at times frustrating, time. I would recommend something more scientific: observe the world (data/observations), develop a hypothesis that is hard in Platt's sense (meaning it should be discriminating) and test the hypothesis on new data and observations, where new means not used to develop the hypothesis to be tested. And they will see that they should not only collect observations that describe the world, but develop and test hypotheses that can test the mechanisms that lead to those observed facts. Sometimes this is possible, sometimes it is not. But it is always entertaining.