News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on What Does It Mean to Learn?. Parent comment

Re:What Does It Mean to Learn? by fhdsgbbcaA on Monday September 02, 2024 @01:51PM (#41427416)
A very accomplished older professor once told me in grad school that “research” was a process of first intuiting patterns, and then “searching” for further examples of said pattern, and then “re-searching” until you had statistical confirmation.

I very much agree.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What Does It Mean to Learn? by dotsam on Monday September 02, 2024 @02:12PM (#41427578)
You don't keep searching until a point of "statistical confirmation". This implies you have arrived at an infallible truth. Instead you look for ways you could be wrong, and try to correct any errors you find.

For instance, if you guess 'all swans are white', you don't ever get "statistical confirmation" that your guess was right. When you eventually see a black swan, you find out you were wrong. Then it's time to come up with a new theory.

[ Parent | on HN ]