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Comment by Surio | Hacker News Reader

While context also has some part to play, in general I am with you in what you are trying to say.

BTW, are fictional characters counted as references? ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#Knowledge_and_s...

From that article, In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things.

EDIT: Somewhat relevant (and OT) comic... http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

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If you're going to use Holmes as a reference, then you agree with Edison and disagree with Einstein.

Holmes was characterized as profoundly valuing facts (as well as methods of thinking), if and only if those facts were useful to crime-solving. He was noted, for example, for his monograph on tobacco-ash residues. That is, he knew so much about the details of tobacco ash that, upon sampling some ash found at a crime scene, he could infer many useful things from it. Another example is that he is so familiar with all the various mud around London that when he sees some dried, he can guess where it came from.

Holmes is, overall, preposterous. And his theories (the theories that Sir ACD put in his mouth) are almost entirely without evidence.

That said, theories without facts to work upon are like a level with no fulcrum.

Right.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Do not take advice from Sherlock Homes, because he is fictional and thus can be no smarter than his creator, a man who quite literally believed in fairies, and could not be persuaded that Houdini was not actually magic.

While I agree with your point here, I'd like to question the statement that a creation can be no smarter than its creator.

This may well be true if we're talking about real-time creation, but it's absolutely possible to put in more brain cycles into offline, pre-processed creation and get better results.

Right. There are at least two different types of 'smarter'. Thinking speed is one dimension on which a mind can scale, but not the only one. A moderately competent chess player may play at grand-master level if given centuries of dedicated time to think about each move, but no amount of time-per-move will make a chimp a good chess player.

I think there are two different kinds of facts:

1. Random facts that have no obvious connection to what you're working on. 2. Facts that come in use frequently, and form the basis of expertise.

I expect there were many facts that Einstein did have memorized, even though he could look them up.

Holmes is surely an exaggeration, but in many domains expertise is simply mastery of basic elements.

Understanding many little pieces lets you see the whole more clearly than someone who is missing parts. Experts have enhanced intuition.

This is a distinct type of knowledge from the depth of the pacific ocean. That kind of knowledge will not improve intuition if memorized.

obligatory debunking: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesl...

Debunking of the sorry attempt at debunking.

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response

I know this is offtopic, but it's a great point... There's a paragraph that says "This is a fair point." next to it. It basically says that we all stand on the shoulders of giants - and that other inventions allow new inventions to be discovered/developed. This is the EXACT reason I disagree with most patents.

Apologies for the off-topic rant, but it's one of my passions. I'm most probably preaching to the converted.

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