<story><title>&quot;... so now I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak&quot; is not acceptable&apos;</title><url>http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1126136</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eof</author><text>This, in turn, reminds me of a long-shot theory about how the universe works that I sometimes ponder.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t think of how many times someone has come to me with a computer problem, or I&apos;ve gone to a vendor/support chat with a problem that hasn&apos;t worked dozens or hundreds of times.  Then suddenly, with the guru there, whether it is me or someone else, suddenly the problem evaporates.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve found myself wondering if this wasn&apos;t some illusion, but an actual artifact of the nature of the universe.  Think about it: if noob&apos;s problems everywhere were actually the universe not letting their shit work, there would be &lt;i&gt;no one&lt;/i&gt; to ever notice it; because when the expert comes in and fixes it, it is magic to the noob anyway, and the expert is 100% used to mundanes not having their stuff work for any given reason.</text></item><item><author>j_baker</author><text>I can&apos;t help being reminded of this hacker koan:&lt;p&gt;A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.&lt;p&gt;Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: &quot;You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>freshhawk</author><text>There is already a scientific explanation for this.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s called &quot;confirmation bias&quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>&quot;... so now I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak&quot; is not acceptable&apos;</title><url>http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1126136</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eof</author><text>This, in turn, reminds me of a long-shot theory about how the universe works that I sometimes ponder.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t think of how many times someone has come to me with a computer problem, or I&apos;ve gone to a vendor/support chat with a problem that hasn&apos;t worked dozens or hundreds of times.  Then suddenly, with the guru there, whether it is me or someone else, suddenly the problem evaporates.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve found myself wondering if this wasn&apos;t some illusion, but an actual artifact of the nature of the universe.  Think about it: if noob&apos;s problems everywhere were actually the universe not letting their shit work, there would be &lt;i&gt;no one&lt;/i&gt; to ever notice it; because when the expert comes in and fixes it, it is magic to the noob anyway, and the expert is 100% used to mundanes not having their stuff work for any given reason.</text></item><item><author>j_baker</author><text>I can&apos;t help being reminded of this hacker koan:&lt;p&gt;A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.&lt;p&gt;Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: &quot;You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noonespecial</author><text>We call it &quot;personal entropy&quot;. Some people have more of it than others.</text></comment>