I wonder how this relates to tracking down hard-to-find bugs in computer programs.
And that the tremendous high comes from having hit the problem from every angle you can manage, and having bounced; and then having analyzed the problem again, using every idea you can think of, and all the data you can get your hands on—making progress a little at a time—so that when, finally, you crack through the problem, all the dangling pieces and unresolved questions fall into place at once, like solving a dozen locked-room murder mysteries with a single clue.
This sounds very similar to trying to track down a tricky bug to me. I was going to say that bug-hunting is also almost always original discovery, but the everett-branch/tegmark duplicate argument demolishes that idea.
One important difference betwen bug-hunting and scientific discovery is probably the expected effort; even well-hidden bugs usually don’t take months to track down if the programmer focuses on the task.
I wonder how this relates to tracking down hard-to-find bugs in computer programs.
And that the tremendous high comes from having hit the problem from every angle you can manage, and having bounced; and then having analyzed the problem again, using every idea you can think of, and all the data you can get your hands on—making progress a little at a time—so that when, finally, you crack through the problem, all the dangling pieces and unresolved questions fall into place at once, like solving a dozen locked-room murder mysteries with a single clue.
This sounds very similar to trying to track down a tricky bug to me. I was going to say that bug-hunting is also almost always original discovery, but the everett-branch/tegmark duplicate argument demolishes that idea. One important difference betwen bug-hunting and scientific discovery is probably the expected effort; even well-hidden bugs usually don’t take months to track down if the programmer focuses on the task.
A good comparative example!
though I’d suggest that in the Age of Google, even bug-tracking has it’s share of “previously discovered” canon.
It’s much easier to track down a common bug these days. You only have to hand-hunt bugs that nobody’s come across (and blogged about) before.