I pointed out in this post that explanations can be confusing because you lack some assumed knowledge, or because the piece of info that will make the explanation click has yet to be presented (assuming a good/correct explanation to begin with). It seems like there can be a similar breakdown when facing confsion in the process of trying to solve a problem.
I was working on some puzzles in assembly code, and I made the mistake of interpreting hex numbers as decimal (treating 0x30 as 30 instead of 48). This lead me to draw a memory map that looked really weird and confusing. There also happened to be a bunch of nested functions that would operate on this block of memory. I definately noticed my confusion, but I think I implicitly predicted that my confusing memory diagram would make sense in light of investigatin the functions more.
In this particular example, that was the wrong prediction to make. I’m curious if I would have made the same prediciton if I had been making it explicitly. This seems to point at a general situation one could find themselves in when noticing confusion. “Did I screw something up earlier, or do I just not have enough info for this to make sense?”
Again, in my assembly example, I might have benefited from examining my confusion. I could have noticed thta the memory diagram I was drawing didnt just not immediately make sense, but that it also violated most rules of “how to not ruin you computer through bad code”.
I pointed out in this post that explanations can be confusing because you lack some assumed knowledge, or because the piece of info that will make the explanation click has yet to be presented (assuming a good/correct explanation to begin with). It seems like there can be a similar breakdown when facing confsion in the process of trying to solve a problem.
I was working on some puzzles in assembly code, and I made the mistake of interpreting hex numbers as decimal (treating 0x30 as 30 instead of 48). This lead me to draw a memory map that looked really weird and confusing. There also happened to be a bunch of nested functions that would operate on this block of memory. I definately noticed my confusion, but I think I implicitly predicted that my confusing memory diagram would make sense in light of investigatin the functions more.
In this particular example, that was the wrong prediction to make. I’m curious if I would have made the same prediciton if I had been making it explicitly. This seems to point at a general situation one could find themselves in when noticing confusion. “Did I screw something up earlier, or do I just not have enough info for this to make sense?”
Again, in my assembly example, I might have benefited from examining my confusion. I could have noticed thta the memory diagram I was drawing didnt just not immediately make sense, but that it also violated most rules of “how to not ruin you computer through bad code”.