On 5/18/13 10:30 AM, deadalnix wrote:
On Saturday, 18 May 2013 at 14:22:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
This is what I call the "low potential energy mental block". Very hard
to get out of.
Can you explain this please ?
Happens to me a lot, and am fighting it for dear life. Occurs when a person:
1. Doesn't understand something
2. Doesn't understand (s)he doesn't understand that something
3. Consequently forms a belief there is no lack of understanding
4. Thus has little motivation to change opinion in the matter and see
things differently, since there's no need for that (i.e. enters a low
potential energy that's difficult to get out of)
5. Whenever discussing the matter, amasses further misunderstood pieces
of evidence due to confirmation bias, therefore furthering the depth of
the potential hole
Such phenomena are widespread and used most visibly in sitcoms in the
following classic pattern: two people discuss a matter in which they
make different assumptions about a context (e.g. one thinks it's about a
person, the other thinks it's about a bottle). During the discussion,
both use pieces and tidbits of ambiguous language from the other to
further consolidate their belief the topic is indeed what they thought
it would be. The watcher, knowing the context of both characters,
derives enjoyment figuring how the same conversation may be viewed in
completely different ways.
Consider the following classics that Walter, myself, or sometimes both
have been going through:
- virtual machines are a crock
- non-null pointers are meh
- generic is better than OOP
- can't/shouldn't check for arithmetic overflow
Some past ones that we fixed:
- string lambdas are just fine
- can't have many integral types without unsafe casts
- can't fix a < b < c to stay C-compatible and meaningful
Andrei
