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Karl Popper came up with the idea in the 1930's that scientists should attempt to falsify their hypotheses rather than to verify them. The basic reasoning is that while you cannot prove a hypothesis to be true by finding a number of different confirming instances (though confirming instances do make you more confident in the truth), you can prove a hypothesis to be false by finding one valid counter-example.
Now Orin Thomas writes at WindowsITPro that you’ve probably diagnosed hundreds, if not thousands, of technical problems in your career and Popper's insights can serve as a valuable guide to avoid a couple of hours chasing solutions that turn out to be an incorrect answer. According to Thomas when troubleshooting a technical problem many of us “race ahead” and use our intuition to reach a hypothesis as to a possible cause before we’ve had time to assess the available body of evidence. "When we use our intuition to solve a problem, we look for things that confirm the conclusion. If we find something that confirms that conclusion, we become even more certain of that conclusion. Most people also unconsciously ignore obvious data that would disprove their incorrect hypothesis because the first reaction to a conclusion reached at through intuition is to try and confirm it rather than refute it."
Thomas says that the idea behind using a falsificationist method is to treat your initial conclusions about a complex troubleshooting problem as untrustworthy and rather than look for something to confirm what you think might have happened, try to figure out what evidence would disprove that conclusion. "Trying to disprove your conclusions may not give you the correct answer right away, but at least you won’t spend a couple of hours chasing what turns out to be an incorrect answer."
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Monday May 25 2015, @06:26PM
The art of troubleshooting, below.
If it runs on windows, the problem is windows, reboot and hope for the best.
If it runs on OSX, the problem is that you have to spend $$$ and update.
If it runs on GNU/Linux, the problem is you.
If it runs on systemd/linux: the problem is this [youtube.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:07PM
I don't know if it was the juxtaposition or what, but I was laughing out loud for way too long.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday May 25 2015, @08:38PM
Sheesh, it isn't THAT difficult to remove, it only took me 3 days of work troubleshooting and rebuilding Debian packages :-)
P.S.: Devuan is *not* a joke, but it is still in "alpha".
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday May 25 2015, @09:16PM
P.S.: Devuan is *not* a joke, but it is still in "alpha".
unfortunately, Devuan is vaporware because they run off developers that want to help.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 26 2015, @04:35PM
I run void linux, and stuff in docker containers. Runit > systemd for me so far.
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