[barrkel]

The trouble is, most of the time (i.e. almost all the time), it's more efficient to assume that the common wisdom is correct. If you don't accept this wisdom, you'll end up making noob mistakes long after you "should know better".

It also doesn't help that society almost colludes in this. People are more forgiving of youngsters making mistakes; they are far more likely to dismiss the same when the person is older, as they infer that since that person hasn't learned by now, they're clearly not very bright / good at what they do / whatever.

[k0n2ad]

Point taken - but are we talking about "common wisdom" in general, or "common wisdom of what's possible"?

[barrkel]

I think the common wisdom of what's possible is only broken by breaking one of the links in the chain of reasoning that makes people think it's impossible, and all those links form common wisdom in general.

Usually, when you think something is impossible that turns out not to be, it's because one of your assumptions was incorrect. But looking for the bad assumption is usually like looking for the bad stone in a pyramid - each assumption is in turn held up by other assumptions, and so on. And it's made more complicated by cross-relationships which can add an exponential aspect to the problem.

Usually, the bad assumption looks obvious in retrospect, but it's seldom that way before the insight.

[k0n2ad]

That being said, I just pulled some stuff out of my code that I really shouldn't have :) Thought I was going to start a revolution there.