You Don’t Truly Understand It Until You Think It’s Obvious
excid3.com
excid3.com
Arthur Schopenhauer said, "All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
If you present a truth to someone whom doesn't have sufficient context for what you are saying, it may seem outrageous and ridiculous to them because the gap between their understanding and the insight you presenting is too great.
They would have to build up their understanding of the context around it until it expands to a point where they find a connection to what they already know. Then they can start to relate to it and eventually they may see it as self evident.
Jeff Jonas has a great metaphor for explaining context in terms of puzzle pieces and how it relates to big data (see this short TechCrunchTV segment - http://www.techcrunch.tv/watch/s4ZnZyMTrtWTaKSxWF2WEPPXkBtMj...).
This is how Richard Feynman approached problem solving -- he wanted to connect new ideas to what he already understood and understand the context of everything around it:
"It's not quite true that Feynman could not accept an idea until he had torn it apart. Rather, the idea could not yet be part of his way of thinking and looking at the world. Before an idea could contribute to that worldview, Feynman wanted to turn over the idea, to see why it was true, from any angle that he could find...In other words, he wanted to connect a new idea to what he already understood and thereby extend his understanding" (http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/08/how-richard-feynman-t...).
Once you surround a new concept with enough puzzle pieces, it attaches to what you already know and then eventually it becomes obvious.
What? Making new variables is better. The compiler will generally figure out the scope of variables and re-use the space taken by variables.
This tends to suggest that at least for him, the functional/immutable meaning of variables was more natural.
Edit: Wait, was that BASIC line numbers reaching to 38000, or 38000 actual individual lines?
GW Basic did let you do basic graphics, I eventually got around to emulating a side scroller at one point. Obviously it was just the foreground, but it was quite a lot of fun.
Maybe today. But back then they certainly didn't.
Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.
(Whatever is well conceived is clearly said, And the words to say it flow with ease.)
And those words also flow with ease.
"See one; Do one; Teach one"
You have to see it done first, then you have to do it yourself, finally, you have to teach it to others.
At the start of my PhD my argument was obvious to me, but it's taken many years of hard work to turn that implicit understanding into an explicit, proper understanding (and I'm not fully there yet).
Also "What is obvious in hindsight may be invisible in foresight."
3. What is obvious in hindsight may be invisible in foresight.
There is no magic in creativity.
That's not at all clear. It could well turn out that more processing power than is easily available is necessary to run the experiments that would give us the answers to how intelligence works.
I think it possible that we will not understand intelligence until we can run and tweak intelligent software. Fortunately, we don't have to do anything like an exhaustive search of the space because we have a working example of intelligence that we can copy without having to understand how it works. Doing this will require very large amounts of computing power, but not computronium.
My point was just that anything besides an exhaustive search of the space is applying some sort of "creativity magic."
Also FWIW, I believe that in order to simulate a brain on a computer we will essentially need to know how it works, which we are no where near. That is my opinion as an AI researcher, but there are certainly others who know more than me and disagree.
Sometimes I think I would have been better off with a little theory at first, but then I wonder if I would have even developed the passion without the immediate joy of creation.
quick example - you hold a ball and let it go. "obviously" it drops, but think about it - why did it drop and I'm pretty sure even the most advanced string theorists couldn't explain definitively why it went towards the ground.
"true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing" - socrates
It's a Charlie Rose segment where Jim Collins is discussing his book "How the Mighty Fall" (http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10565). He talks about the five stages of decline in any great enterprise. Stage 1 is hubris -- thinking you know it all.
You can't patent obvious things. But once someone invents something it suddenly seems obvious, and people ridicule the idea of patenting it.
To be honest, I think your argument supports the abolition of patents more than you think it does. EVERY idea was built on the back of previous ideas. "Novelty" is only a matter of degree, and subjective degree at that.
Sigh... It seems author doesn't yet have the breadth of experience to know there are many different levels of understanding appropriate to many different fields, tasks and kinds of mastery.