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I think of "fish don't know they live in water" problems... problems so deeply endemic to a specific field that the practitioners of that field don't realize it
by beat 11y ago
I think of "fish don't know they live in water" problems... problems so deeply endemic to a specific field that the practitioners of that field don't realize it. It's as ordinary as breathing to them.
I'm devoted to solving one of those myself, in the configuration management space. When I get it off the ground, lots of happy fish (well, engineers) will know about the water.
- CPLX 11y agoI think it's amusing that as of this writing nearly all the other comments on this post are somewhat snarky and dismissive of the problems the author mentioned. Personally I thought several of them were quite compelling, especially the authentication one. Perhaps HN is an aquarium full of fishes, so to speak.
- jdbernard 11y agoYes, a lot of them are compelling. The problem, from my point of view, is that these aren't blind spots, especially authentication. Lots of people and companies have tried, lots of people and companies are still trying. I was hoping to gain insight into problems I didn't already know about when I clicked the link. This article is not really adding value. It's just complaining. That's not a particularly useful thing to hear.
- CPLX 11y agoHe's not saying that they are literally invisible, his actual quote is "those problems that we don’t bother changing because we’ve stopped seeing them as solvable" Which I think is a reasonably reality based point of view.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoI've never understood the popular idea that fish can't recognize water because it's all around them. Here are some equivalent ideas: - No human culture has a concept of air. - Humans can't tell whether wind is blowing or not. - Abolitionism couldn't happen, since slavery was present everywhere, and therefore the concept of not having slavery didn't exist.
- SiVal 11y agoThe concept is not that fish CAN'T recognize water, it's that it's more difficult for (metaphorical) fish that have always been immersed in water to notice water than for (metaphorical) animals that have seen both water and no water situations. The way it's usually stated is that fish are likely to be the last ones to notice water. It's the idea that you are more likely to ask yourself why traffic lights use red for stop and green for go instead of, say, the reverse the first day you visit a country that uses different colors than you were the previous day.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoYou're giving a lot of people much more credit than they deserve. http://fishcantseewater.com/ http://fishcantseewater.com/
- corobo 11y agoFish aren't as observant as humans
- Mz 11y agoThat sounds species-ist. Citation needed.
- Retra 11y agoAn equivalent idea would be: - Humans don't realize the possibility of living on the bottom of the ocean or in space. We overwhelmingly assume that we must live on land and above water. Nobody builds houses under rivers or ponds. Either way, it's just a metaphor.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoNope. The idea isn't that fish don't think they can live outside of the water. For most fish, that would be completely correct. This imagery is always used to say that fish don't (and can't) know what water is, or realize that there's anything there at all.