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A comment on Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years.

Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by satvikpendem on Thursday December 15, 2022 @10:16PM (#34009472)
> Six months before Rajpopat made his discovery, his supervisor at Cambridge, Vincenzo Vergiani, Professor of Sanskrit, gave him some prescient advice: "If the solution is complicated, you are probably wrong."

> Rajpopat said, "I had a eureka moment in Cambridge. After 9 months trying to crack this problem, I was almost ready to quit, I was getting nowhere. So I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer, swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating. Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense. There was a lot more work to do but I'd found the biggest part of the puzzle."

> "Over the next few weeks I was so excited, I couldn't sleep and would spend hours in the library, including in the middle of the night to check what I'd found and solve related problems. That work took another two and half years."

I (and probably every programmer (or mathematician, physicist, carpenter, or problem solver) on the planet) have felt this effect first-hand. Incredible how well the brain can collate and sift through information if you just give it the space to do so.

A related effect, when I was a time where all I did was look at a screen all day, looking up new information, I couldn't solve problems nearly as fast. Looks like I wasn't allowing the incubation period in my mind to start and continue unabated.

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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by walty8 on Thursday December 15, 2022 @11:29PM (#34010225)
In general, for complicated items, I prefer to code at one place and think at another place. They seems to require different parts of your brain, and have different 'comfortable spots'.
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by Agentlien on Thursday December 15, 2022 @11:40PM (#34010338)
When I'm stuck I go on a long walk in the forest where I live. It really helps clear my mind and relieve stress.
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by therealdrag0 on Friday December 16, 2022 @01:38AM (#34011317)
One of my HS math teachers would regularly change seating arrangements based on the idea that it helps thinking and problem solving.
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by b0afc375b5 on Friday December 16, 2022 @12:16AM (#34010682)
Is there a specific term for this subconscious phenomenon?

I believe I have experienced this multiple times, but I remember one event in particular when I couldn't solve a book exercise for several hours, I slept in frustration. When I woke up I knew the answer immediately as if it was obvious.

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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by 1270018080 on Friday December 16, 2022 @12:29AM (#34010799)
Or when I am trying to memorize a speech. I don't have it memorized when I go to bed, and I have it memorized when I wake up.
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by rhplus on Friday December 16, 2022 @12:45AM (#34010914)
“Sleeping on it” probably gives the brain time for “spreading activation“, which is a model that describes how relationships between concepts are explored and formed.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-012-0256-7

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/spread...

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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by justsomehnguy on Friday December 16, 2022 @01:15AM (#34011114)
> I slept in frustration

Human brain runs a defrag process (quite literally) when the body sleeps. Not only this removes the cruft from the day but also rearranges and makes links for the knowledge gathered through the day.

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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by hn_go_brrrrr on Friday December 16, 2022 @04:05AM (#34012444)
Is glymphatic cleaning related to knowledge retention?
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by justsomehnguy on Friday December 16, 2022 @11:12PM (#34024562)
It's more like they go hand in hand. I wouldn't say what it depends on it, but without it it would much harder to retain and structure new information. It is commonly observed in a long hours jobs and tests what after some time the new info just doesn't get processed properly.
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by sanatgersappa on Friday December 16, 2022 @02:00AM (#34011531)
Rich Hickey has a nice name for it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by Vetch on Friday December 16, 2022 @05:33AM (#34012943)
Perhaps the Eureka effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect)?
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by MojoMonk on Friday December 16, 2022 @01:55AM (#34011487)
He just gave the brain the time to digest what he had already learned. And then, the Eureka moment appeared.
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by bambax on Friday December 16, 2022 @06:30AM (#34013386)
> I (and probably every programmer (or mathematician, physicist, carpenter, or problem solver) on the planet) have felt this effect first-hand. Incredible how well the brain can collate and sift through information if you just give it the space to do so.

This is so. much. true. Curiously, it's very well known and yet ignored most of the time, for some reason.

For simpler problems, a night sleep can be enough. Just tell your brain to work on it before you go to sleep and the solution will be ready for you by breakfast, like magic.

Or sometimes, a work in the park.

"Give your brain some space" should be taught in every school and yet many times we tell kids the opposite.

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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by lumb63 on Friday December 16, 2022 @08:15AM (#34014174)
The book “Why We Sleep” discusses this. I believe it was Thomas Edison (I could be wrong) would fall asleep with a pan next to his chair, his hand over the pan, and his hand full of marbles. When he’d fall asleep, his muscles would relax and he’d drop the marbles, waking him up. He used it to harvest ideas.
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Re:Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years by tsavo on Friday December 16, 2022 @10:14AM (#34015416)
Having written a few papers using a similar effect. While I may thoroughly research when fully awake, I would wait until exhausted to write observations. Falling asleep while writing, I would continue to write in my sleep. You can see in my notes the moment I fell asleep as my handwriting style would change and still be legible. When I'd wake up, I wouldn't remember everything I had thought about but it'd still be in my sleep notes.
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