4 ms·

Sounds like a bit of survivorship bias. Every success from people following well known principles does not translate into a blog post or research paper. You als

Sounds like a bit of survivorship bias. Every success from people following well known principles does not translate into a blog post or research paper. You also don’t hear about all of the people who failed because they tried something novel and it didn’t work. I would suggest positive takeaways is to: trust but verify. If you’ve got a novel solution idea and don’t understand why others aren’t doing it that way, do both and compare. You’re guaranteed to learn something one way or another. Also: if you reinvent the wheel or do something suboptimal then that’s okay too. Sometimes the solutions don’t make sense until you see what doesn’t work. Likewise: be open to learning from others and exploring solutions outside of your predefined notion of how things should work.

danpalmer 2y ago
> You also don’t hear about all of the people who failed because they tried something novel and it didn’t work. Or all the people who, through ignorance or hubris, thought they could do better than the state of the art. Or all the people who independently invent things that already exist. These may be what you're referring to, but thought it's worth re-stating these as they are far more common cases than people inventing truly novel approaches.
postalrat 2y ago
A while back I was asked to write some software to make print out labels small enough to fit through a button hole. I convinced myself it wasn't possible because the spacing between the cutter and the print head. Then my boss showed me a label that was printed by a competitors system and I had it figured out within an hour or so. Although this was a minor thing it convinced how powerful knowing something is possible (or not) really is.
- schneems 2y ago
  That’s a wonderful and visceral story. To me science is about defining the bounds of the possible. To do that you also need to push the bounds and occasionally update everything you thought you knew. In the case of CS where we find new, lower bounds, I find that especially exciting. I meant to append this to my original reply but I’ll say here: I enjoyed Knowledge Based AI from Georgia Tech. The lectures tallied about different types of knowledge acquisition as it applies to humans and them how we’ve mapped that to machines. That along with HCI were my favorite OMSCS courses. In your case, seeing a new, lower bounds helped push you to look in different directions and re-examine your assumptions. In KBAI we weren’t allowed to share code (of course) but were given very wide leniency in what we could share. Posing my performance numbers and reading other’s gave me a sense of what’s possible and had a similar effect as your story.
- SecretDreams 2y ago
  This is how I operate with most tech related topics. Just assume it's possible and proceed accordingly.
sesteel 2y ago
I cannot tell you the number of times I thought I invented something new and novel only to later find out it already existed. So, while it is true that you can sometimes find paths untraveled, many things related to first principles seem already heavily explored in CS.
- schneems 2y ago
  That sounds like it could be interpreted two ways. On one hand you’re not the first to discover something, on the other hand your invention is validated as being worthwhile. In times like those (depending on how much work I put into it) I might retrace the steps I took when I was searching for a solution before writing my own and if I can find something like a stack overflow post then link to the ultimate solution. Or blog about it using the search terms I originally tried etc. A core part of science is reproducing others work. Also from HCI one thing I took away from research on brainstorming: slight variations and deviations can be novel and produce a better outcome. The research here is that people misunderstanding someone else’s idea isn’t a problem, but rather generates a brand new alternative. If you feel you’ve redone some work, look a little closer, perhaps something small about it is novel or new.

danpalmer 2y ago

> You also don’t hear about all of the people who failed because they tried something novel and it didn’t work. Or all the people who, through ignorance or hubris, thought they could do better than the state of the art. Or all the people who independently invent things that already exist. These may be what you're referring to, but thought it's worth re-stating these as they are far more common cases than people inventing truly novel approaches.

postalrat 2y ago

A while back I was asked to write some software to make print out labels small enough to fit through a button hole. I convinced myself it wasn't possible because the spacing between the cutter and the print head. Then my boss showed me a label that was printed by a competitors system and I had it figured out within an hour or so. Although this was a minor thing it convinced how powerful knowing something is possible (or not) really is.

schneems 2y ago
That’s a wonderful and visceral story. To me science is about defining the bounds of the possible. To do that you also need to push the bounds and occasionally update everything you thought you knew. In the case of CS where we find new, lower bounds, I find that especially exciting. I meant to append this to my original reply but I’ll say here: I enjoyed Knowledge Based AI from Georgia Tech. The lectures tallied about different types of knowledge acquisition as it applies to humans and them how we’ve mapped that to machines. That along with HCI were my favorite OMSCS courses. In your case, seeing a new, lower bounds helped push you to look in different directions and re-examine your assumptions. In KBAI we weren’t allowed to share code (of course) but were given very wide leniency in what we could share. Posing my performance numbers and reading other’s gave me a sense of what’s possible and had a similar effect as your story.
SecretDreams 2y ago
This is how I operate with most tech related topics. Just assume it's possible and proceed accordingly.

sesteel 2y ago

I cannot tell you the number of times I thought I invented something new and novel only to later find out it already existed. So, while it is true that you can sometimes find paths untraveled, many things related to first principles seem already heavily explored in CS.

schneems 2y ago
That sounds like it could be interpreted two ways. On one hand you’re not the first to discover something, on the other hand your invention is validated as being worthwhile. In times like those (depending on how much work I put into it) I might retrace the steps I took when I was searching for a solution before writing my own and if I can find something like a stack overflow post then link to the ultimate solution. Or blog about it using the search terms I originally tried etc. A core part of science is reproducing others work. Also from HCI one thing I took away from research on brainstorming: slight variations and deviations can be novel and produce a better outcome. The research here is that people misunderstanding someone else’s idea isn’t a problem, but rather generates a brand new alternative. If you feel you’ve redone some work, look a little closer, perhaps something small about it is novel or new.