SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the it's-harder-to-reverse-engineer-someone-else's-work-than-the-new-stuff-we-just-came-up-with dept.
Here's Why Our Brains Solve Problems by Adding Things, Not Removing:
Have you ever noticed how we usually try and solve problems by adding more, rather than taking away? More meetings, more forms, more buttons, more shelves, more systems, more code, and so on. Now scientists think they might know the reason why.
A study of 1,585 people across 8 different experiments showed that our brains tend to default to addition rather than subtraction when it comes to finding solutions – in many cases, it seems we just don't consider the strategy of taking something away at all.
The researchers found that this preference for adding was noticeable in three scenarios in particular: when people were under higher cognitive load, when there was less time to consider the other options, and when volunteers didn't get a specific reminder that subtracting was an option.
"It happens in engineering design, which is my main interest," says engineer Leidy Klotz, from the University of Virginia. "But it also happens in writing, cooking, and everything else – just think about your own work and you will see it."
"The first thing that comes to our minds is, what can we add to make it better? Our paper shows we do this to our detriment, even when the only right answer is to subtract. Even with financial incentive, we still don't think to take away."
[...] "The more often people rely on additive strategies, the more cognitively accessible they become," says psychologist Gabrielle Adams, from the University of Virginia.
"Over time, the habit of looking for additive ideas may get stronger and stronger, and in the long run, we end up missing out on many opportunities to improve the world by subtraction."
The research has been published in Nature.
Journal Reference:
Gabrielle S. Adams, Benjamin A. Converse, Andrew H. Hales, et al. People systematically overlook subtractive changes, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03380-y)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 12 2021, @03:13PM (5 children)
Consider this:
I comment out some lines. Add an explanation of why this is subtly wrong and how so. Add lines to do it correctly and/or significantly faster, and in fewer lines of code.
Did I add, or did I subtract?
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @03:26PM (1 child)
Depends on whether you're counting characters, lines or lines of code. It's fewer lines of code which is the appropriate metric here, so you would have subtracted. I believe your being a Java programmer thereIsStillSoMuchMoreToSubtractPleaseCarryOn().
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 12 2021, @04:22PM
That sounds like a good excuse to just add memory. It's all virtual machines anyway. So just dial up how ever many more gigabytes you need. It's just a dial on the screen. No possible effect in the real world.
In fact it is a "virtual data center" (yes, that is an actual thing now, wtf = worse than failure).
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Monday April 12 2021, @03:28PM
Yes.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @09:21PM
You added cruft. Why just comment out the lines? they'll persist forever in source control, we don't need to keep mementos of old "deleted" lines of code around.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday April 12 2021, @11:38PM
Either way, in the right situation it'll get management to stop tracking it [folklore.org].