Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sz 5640 days ago
So the only way to solve a problem is by applying known techniques, apparently.
1 comments

Yes. And one of the techniques is Try to Find a New Technique
Are you sure? Look at the flowchart again.
Huh? It's right there: second column, fourth box down. You could quibble that it isn't "one of the techniques", but the effect of that is to invalidate your original complaint that all the chart tells you to do is to apply known techniques.
Look at the arrows.
OK, I looked at the arrows. (1) What's your point? (2) Is there any actual reason why you haven't said already what it is, rather than all this "Look at the flowchart" / "Look at the arrows" nonsense?

There is an arrow from "Do known techniques apply?", labelled "No". It leads to "Try to find a new technique". There's an arrow back from there to "Do known techniques apply?". Obviously, if you succeeded in finding a new technique applicable to the problem, the set of "known techniques" has expanded and you then follow the "Yes" arrow from "Do known techniques apply?".

Is it your opinion that there is something wrong with this? If so, what?

(If you respond with another passive-aggressive "Look at X" reply, I shall ignore it unless looking at X immediately convinces me that you've been right all along and I've been missing something.)

(1) When I see the phrase "known techniques" in the context of math it generally refers to techniques known in the field. Novel techniques are not "known" in this sense. The different, literal, trivial interpretation of "known" makes the word superfluous. That was the motivation for my first comment. In both cases (your point of view being the second) my comment is true; by this flowchart a technique must be known to be applied. The only way I could see someone disagreeing is if they're confused about what "known" means.

(2) It seemed obvious, and moreover too trivial a point to merit more than just pointing it out. I apologize if I've caused any offense.

* To clarify, I don't consider "find a new technique" to be a technique, which is why I said to look at the arrows.

You have exactly captured my intent.