
My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am - johnny_reilly
http://blog.johnnyreilly.com/2016/11/my-subconscious-is-better-developer.html
======
lazydon
If you look carefully enough its not only the developer in you but anything
meaningful or living in your life is done by someone other than what you
usually refer to as me. Normally, such phenomenon is mostly associated with
ideas we get on waking up or during shower or exercise.

My observation is that whenever you do anything that's unscripted or unplanned
- it's "someone else". Say - answering well an interview with questions that
you never expected and had relatively less exposure to, writing a blog post
when you plan to write something but then all the ideas rush in and begin to
write themselves and so on. I'm from India and I find it hard to communicate
with western people these ideas directly. A contemporary ideas that's closest
is the Dennet's theory of Narrative Self. Essentially, this article is the
author's narrative self trying to make sense of the overnight solution the
got.

it was interesting when in article he says such ideas come to him sometimes
not all the time - one thing he can do to improve this is to subdue this
narrative self a bit. A very good video on this point is by Alan Kay in
context of Inner Game of Tennis:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos)

~~~
charlieflowers
Think about what happens when you decide where to eat for lunch. There's an
internal process whereby you propose various images (hamburger? pizza?
Mexican?). Something else "inside you" says, "Nah, that doesn't sound good.
Hmm, maybe. Yeah, that!"

Who are you asking? Who is answering?

~~~
Klathmon
I had a discussion with my friends many years ago that your comment reminded
me of.

I don't "visualize" things I think about automatically. I'd need to
concentrate on trying to visualize pizza to see it and even then it's a vague
visualization with no real defining features. When casually thinking about
pizza I don't visualize anything.

Some of my friends couldn't not visualize what they were thinking about. If
they think of pizza, they "see" pizza in their head, and could even describe
what they were visualizing in that instance in surprising (to me) detail.

We found that we were pretty well split 50/50 with no obvious associations.

~~~
DanBC
There have been a couple of articles about aphantsia on HN. I'm having trouble
finding them.

Here's two

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894)

~~~
bemmu
How can I know that having / not having aphantasia is a real thing? Our bodies
are otherwise so similar that it would be surprising if our brains were wildly
different in operation.

If people are able to "see" their thoughts in the same way as they see
something with their eyes, wouldn't it be difficult to think about a cat while
driving a car, because the cat would be in your visual field? Or is the
"mind's eye" somewhere else, if so where do you feel it is?

If I think about a cat, it's kind of a concept. If I try to think harder, I
can sort of trace its tail and fur and ears, but it seems very different to
actually seeing one. Just as when I imagine a taste, it's very different from
actually tasting something (otherwise I would just imagine food all day
without actually eating as much).

The only time when these seem the same is when dreaming.

------
sweetjesus
This is going to be difficult to accept probably, but fwiw here's the gist of
what modern psychiatry has to say: the brain is not divided into conscious
thought and unconscious thought; rather, all the brain's work takes place
unconsciously, on all topics, all the time. What we then call consciousness is
a product of the fully occupied and engaged unconscious mind.

So in terms of the headline, your unconscious is not a better developer than
you are; your unconscious is your only developer.

Furthermore, [while emotion and logic both exist] there are not logical
thoughts and emotional thoughts, emotion is engaged in thought all the time.
You will actually form different "logical" conclusions on the basis of your
mood, emotional state, etc. (As an example in grossly stereotypical terms,
this is what you might imagine happening "so clearly" in a PMSing woman; the
fallacy is that men are not doing the same thing all the time, they are.) So,
to the blog poster's point, his unconscious "better developer" is actually the
emotional preoccupations of his consciousness getting in the way of his being
able to get to realize what his uncounscious developer is capable of. [Didn't
mean to overstate that: in the case where he notices his unconscious mind
coming up with good work, sometimes it just takes more time to create/uncover
a good solution; just saying it's the same portions of the brain continuing to
chew on the problem, conscious or not.]

For people interested, the brain science book "Thinking Fast and Slow" is very
good, it will convince you that your brain does not work the way you think it
does. It doesn't necessarily say all what I said above, some of that comes
from psychiatry. Freud's enduring contribution to the field was his
realization how much unconscious thought was taking place. BTW the term
"unconscious" is preferred because historically in the field, "subconscious"
is a term associated with Jung's "collective unconscious".

~~~
wyager
Forgive me if I put as much faith in this answer as anything else said by
psychologists or psychiatrists over the last 100 years (I.e. almost completely
irreproducible and constantly overturned claims). I'll believe it once
psychology is reduced to computational neurophysiology.

~~~
sweetjesus
100 years ago, the proponents of the "plum pudding model" and "ether" were
still alive and kicking. Good science takes time, and must account for all the
evidence. Psychology won't be reduced till we achieve "computational
neuroemotional physiology". Don't let an enduring discomfort with human
emotions give you a scientific blind spot to human nature, otherwise your AI
will have trouble finding its way out of the uncanny valley. ;)

~~~
wyager
And yet the vast majority of experimental and even theoretical physics was
correct (and simply a limiting case of a more general theory), in diametric
opposition to psychology. Physics has _never_ thrown the baby out with the
bathwater, but psychology does it every generation or two.

> computational neuroemotional physiology

Not sure what you mean by this. Computational neurophysiology would obviously
subsume emotional behavior (unless you subscribe to dualism).

~~~
sweetjesus
You seem to have nothing to say on the topic of emotion, except that the
1000's of people who study it in universities, clinics and hospitals around
the world have nothing correct to say...

I am certain that your emotions on the subject are clouding your judgement.
But to be the consistent razor of occam as you present yourself, shouldn't
your term be computational neuro? what does physiology have to do with it?

~~~
wyager
What are you on about? I'm not talking about emotion; in case you forgot,
we're in a thread where you provided some pseudo-scientific claim about the
nature of consciousness. I'm questioning the validity of that claim. You seem
to have gone off on a tangent about the nature of emotion.

~~~
sweetjesus
fwiw, I was describing in layperson's terms what is going on in the brain, in
response to which, you are being too reductive. It's like you're telling a
chemist to stop talking about what we know about chemistry because it's all
quantum mechanics, or a chemist telling a biologist that it's all chemistry.
Well, sure it is, but I only post when I have something to add to the
conversation. The average person is unaware of how much in the brain is
unconscious thought, and the average person believes that emotions are
separate from thoughts. I think my presentation was perfect and succinct to
achieve that goal, and I contributed to a greater understanding.

I hope you don't imagine that consciousness in the human brain would be
possible without integrating all of the unconscious thoughts and emotion-
thoughts taking place under the hood. I'm certain that you are not aware that
it was your emotions driving you to reply to me, and not logic.

And building a computational brain neuron by neuron? sure, as long as you
throw in 20 years of cyborg childhood too... let us know how you're coming
with that.

------
kutkloon7
Very interesting article. I read something about Donald Knuth stating that he
has to get used to material for a while, until he is so comfortable that he
can think about while doing other things. Only then he would be able to
produce something useful about the material.

Also, the mathematician Ramanujan often stated that a god handed the solution
to him (I remember something about doing mathematics in his dreams as well,
but I'm not sure if I'm correct on this one).

This seems very interesting. Is there a way one can get so familiar with
material that you can use it without effort? The key seems to be a good mind
and a lot of work. Ramanujan had to be fed by his wife, because he would
prefer doing math to eating dinner, and I imagine Donald Knuth is very
intelligent and a hard worker too.

A thing I've noticed is that repeated exposure works better than long
exposure. I sometimes come up with some neat ideas when I read stuff (usually
mathematical or coding stuff).

It happened a couple times that I remembered such an idea, looked at it again,
and discovered the idea would not work because of a single inconsistency. I am
quite chaotic, and I imagine that smarter people would have this problem a lot
less, but still I think this is a general principle that holds: working
conciously on a problem causes tunnel vision. If you don't know how to solve
an exercise in an hour, you're not very likely to solve it in ten if you just
keep working on it.

If you let it rest and look at it again after a day or two, there is a moment
where you try to recap and remember everything. In this instance, simple
inconsistencies are easily spotted. Letting the problem rest gives you a
chance to look at the problem with a fresh view, which is very important
sometimes.

------
c3RlcGhlbnI_
This makes a lot of sense when you consider more just how small a role your
"conscious" mind plays in your cognition. It is really more of a control
center, and has direct access to a very limited amount of your computing
power. You can't consciously monitor all of your sensory neurons, or make use
of the math processing your mind can do to throw a ball, or manually
coordinate your muscles.

You can see the effect of this very clearly while talking. You don't plan out
each word ahead of time, you go to say something and the words come out. You
can choose to take a step back and plan things in more detail, but this isn't
your default mode of operation. Also even then in your head the words tend to
seem to just come from somewhere in a stream, like a little stimulation of
what you were doing talking out loud.

It is not generally helpful to think of this as a different person, it is you
and you stand to gain a lot from learning to trust it. Like how you trust it
to be able to recall minute details of API documentation despite not being
able to reproduce them in full. You can't recall every code problem you have
ever solved, but in a way your subconscious has, and it has been refining them
into a process to produce those incredible insights.

~~~
Reedx
You also don't know what your next thought is going to be. Furthermore there
are strong arguments that free will is an illusion. See "Free Will" by Sam
Harris.

~~~
dmfdmf
The concept "argument" presupposes you have freewill so its circle, self-
contradictory non-sense to "argue" that it is an illusion.

Edit: for clarity

~~~
thomyorkie
I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

~~~
dmfdmf
Say that you believe X and I believe Y. If I present an argument for Y that
amounts to presenting evidence for your consideration that Y is true and X is
false. The implicit assumption behind arguing with anyone (even your self!) is
that your mind is free to choose to believe X or Y, THAT is freewill.

If freewill is an "illusion" then "argument" is a hollow concept as well. If
we don't have a choice in what to believe then what is the point of arguing?

~~~
thomyorkie
I think argument still has a place in a world where freewill is illusory.
Surely, one's opinions can change when presented with new evidence, regardless
of whether that change originated from a free agent's conscious choice or a
more deterministic background process of which one's consciousness is only
partially aware. Furthermore, that change in opinion can have a meaningful
effect either positively or negatively for both the conscious entity and the
world at large.

~~~
dmfdmf
Again, for the benefit of those who want to understand, you are smuggling in
freewill via the concept "argument". You have no right to use that concept
given your denial of freewill and it doesn't matter how many exceptions,
qualifications or obfuscations you put on the concept "freewill", it is either
a real capacity of our minds or it is not.

The essence of your position is that you are trying to convince me to change
my mind and agree with you that I do not have the capacity to change my mind.
It is a self-contradiction, as all forms of determinism are, and if you were
consistent with your belief you wouldn't be arguing at all, yet here you are.
I think (beyond a certain point) denying freewill is an inherently dishonest
position but unfortunately you have plenty of company.

~~~
ZeroFries
I would contend the opposite: all forms of indeterminism are self
contradictory. Where does your free will come from? Either a choice is
predetermined or it's truly random. What else could it be?

~~~
jospoortvliet
Indeed, the concept of free will is simply illogical and inconsistent. There
is no space for it in even conscious experience if one is just honest about
it. Sam has made that point quite clearly and Daniel Dennet's way out (a bit
of randomness) seems weak to me.

------
sdfjkl
I used this a lot while consulting (as System Architect). I usually instantly
knew if something was a good or bad idea of going about things (or a
technology to use), but would then often have to go off and do some intense
research to provide the evidence of my totally gut-based opinion. Often I
found such evidence sooner rather than later, but sometimes I did not. Since
it still felt right, I'd present whatever I did find in order to try and
persuade clients to go in that direction, and often it was sufficient to
persuade them - especially ones I'd been working with for a while and gained
some trust.

I can't think of a time where this instinct has been wrong (except when it
instantly thought that Twitter was a terrible idea - and I'm still awaiting
the final verdict on that one), although the real reasons why it was the right
choice for a situation did not always become apparent until much later. I
learnt to listen to this instinct, but wish I could gain better insight into
its decision making process! :)

~~~
inopinatus
This is your limbic system calling. The hypothalamus and amygdala together
produce judgements based on experience. The dopaminergic signal they send is
what we call a gut feeling. They excel at managing/judging large amounts of
information, especially in the absence of tools.

You might also call them the seat of learning. Dopamine is very sensitive to
errors in prediction, which is how learning is mediated. What they are not is
the seat of reason.

This is also (partly) why we are bad at distinguishing things we desire from
positive judgements: they use the same signalling. That is when your neocortex
is useful. Being able to override the limbic system is one of the defining
characteristics of conscious behaviour. Feeling driven to do so is another
dopamine-mediated reward structure: the satisfaction of solving a puzzle.

Start here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system)

p.s. my limbic system agrees with yours re.Twitter.

~~~
dualogy
> You might also call them the seat of learning. Dopamine is very sensitive to
> errors in prediction, which is how learning is mediated. What they are not
> is the seat of reason.

Dopamine in what way? Since so many things affect its levels, from sexual
stimulus to most drugs to simple sugars, are we at risk/chance of helping or
hurting the seat of learning through such factors materially in your opinion?

~~~
inopinatus
I mean that an error in prediction will cause a rapid drop in dopamine levels,
which motivates a desire to correct one's understanding. There's a limbic
structure, the anterior cingulate cortex, that seems likely to be the origin
of this.

As for those well-known dopamine stimuli like alcohol, sugar &c, I believe the
worst case scenario is that you reinforce an incipient dependency on those
things, thus contributing to addiction. I'll hold back on having an opinion
about whether the reward sensitization itself directly harms learning. When it
comes to sugar overuse, I'd worry more about insulin resistance having an
effect on glucose uptake throughout the brain rather than specifically harming
the limbic structures.

------
madmax96
Totally experience the same phenomenon.

When I write proofs I experience it even more, there is a voice in my head
(one that I do not identify as being 'me' and is virtually a black box) that
directs me. I often have no idea where it is going as I am writing down
statements, but it never fails to produce good results.

Reminds me a little of Socrate's voice.

~~~
Gnewt
Another commenter linked to the Wikipedia article on Bicameralism. If you're
interested, you might want to check out "The Origin Of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"[0] by Julian Jaynes. The jury is (mostly?)
still out on whether or not Jaynes is a quack, but he asserts that humans used
to be unconscious, bicameral beings who "heard" voices in their heads that
would direct them to do things. I put "heard" in quotes because Jaynes thinks
the entirely process was fully unconscious (in terms of the subjective
consciousness we experience), but that as consciousness developed, people
literally heard voices in their heads for a long time.

Socrates' voice absolutely reminds me of this. Jaynes thinks that the first
"conscious" humans literally heard the "voices of gods" and that we eventually
evolved to lose that as subjective consciousness took over performing the same
function.

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009MBTRHA/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009MBTRHA/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

------
BatFastard
Personally I find when I run into an intractable problem, what works for me is
to exercise. For me that is riding my bike on quite paths. It sets my mind
free and increases blood flow. Fertile ground for solving problems.

~~~
alsetmusic
I second the exercise approach, as I used to solve tough problems over quiet
twenty minute rides on back streets with low traffic.

But the more I've learned (thus the more complex the block), the less
effective this became. I worked on a passion project a few years ago where I
was coding between twelve and sixteen hours a day for several months. When I
was finally so burned out and weary that nothing worked anymore, I took that
as a cue to call it a night. The next morning, almost without fail, I had an
elegant solution in mind before I could even make it from bed to keyboard.

My subconscious definitely IS the ultimate problem solver. The form that it
takes has evolved with the difficulty of the challenges it has to solve.

~~~
BatFastard
I tend to be more tortured by my dreams of coding, I toss the idea around in
my head, but rarely come out with a solution. Any idea's on how to better
utilize my dream state?

~~~
throwanem
Is it possible what you're seeing is driven by anxiety? Anecdotal, but I have
noticed an inverse correlation between how likely I am to intuit a solution,
and how much time I spend consciously ruminating on and worrying about the
problem.

~~~
BatFastard
Indeed it is Anxiety. Happens mostly when I am on a deadline with more things
to solve then I have time to do. Maybe if I practice meditation, it will help
me let go of anxiety before sleep, which will help me sleep better and make my
dreams more productive.

------
ggambetta
I've definitely experienced this, but more recently I've started experiencing
something similar at a smaller scale - my subconscious finds syntax errors
before me or the compiler do!

Sometimes I write a line of code and have this feeling that it's somehow
_wrong_. More often than not, the moment I try to compile and run it, it
fails. The problem is that usually it's only at that point that I become fully
aware of this feeling. I'm actively trying to pay more attention to this, and
really listen to my subconscious when I "know" that the code is wrong at a
subconscious level.

------
lagadu
I'm like this, to the point that I actively harness it: whenever I have some
bigger problem to work on I read it and just not work on it for the rest of
the day. In the morning I just know I'll have a much better understanding of
it somehow.

The morning always brings answers no matter how complex something seems. I
find it extremely relaxing, just being aware that if something is frustrating
I can just drop it for the day and tomorrow I'll know what to do.

Sleeping me is a damn fine mate to have covering my back.

~~~
chubot
Yeah I purposely load up problems in my head before going to bed... then when
I wake up, they're magically solved without any effort. It also has the
benefit of being a natural alarm clock: sometimes I have to get out of bed and
type the solution in and then go back to sleep.

Paul Graham has an essay "the top idea in your mind" where he talks about what
you think about in the shower:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html)

It's pretty much the same idea... what you go to bed thinking about is
probably the same thing you think about in the shower in the morning. For me
the solution comes WHILE sleeping; I don't have to wait to get up and think
about it.

------
dominotw
>There's 2 of me.

I would argue this is the line of thinking that makes us miserable throughout
our lives. Associating 'me' with nobler instincts and pushing off all the
undesirable traits to the 'other me that's not me' , the other me that needs
to be constantly repressed via dieting, meditation, mindfulness,empathy
training, zoloft, CBT ect. And of course none of these things actually work in
any meaningful way because they are built on false premise of 'two of me'.

~~~
ashleypt
you're grouping a lot of things together there you seem to not know much
about. some of them are actually supposed to _combat_ the internal conflict
you're referring to, like meditation. also seriously? CBT and mindfulness
being compared to zoloft? you do know those things are just paying attention
to your own thoughts right? try it sometime before making posts without
researching what you're talking about. also how do you define "works"? what
would constitute them "working"? if >X% of people report feeling better
subjectively? I'm pretty sure the percentage is fairly high for most of those
for the people who need them

and really it'd be more accurate to say there are _three_ of us:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain)

~~~
djfm
Personally I find serotonin reuptake inhibitors to be a great help solving
some class of issues.

------
kesor
This immediately made me remember Dr. Milton H. Erickson who through
conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind,
with its own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that
the unconscious mind was creative, solution-generating, and often positive.
This was a great influence and basis for big parts of NLP (neuro-linguistic
programming), which was in part based on his hypnosis techniques. The NLP
crowd believes that through some tricks and work on yourself, you can open a
wider channel for your unconscious to show its potential, for example not
having to wait a whole day for some answer to come to you.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson)

~~~
goldfeld
Hmmm so a reductive description of NLP sounds exactly like monotheism?

~~~
kesor
I did not describe all of NLP. A better description of NLP would be to say
that it is a technique to model existing people that have a certain skill
(like Milton H. Erickson), and then program other people enabling them to use
the same skill. This is called in NLP "Modeling," and is actually a much
better description of what the thing is about.

The Milton H. Erickson NLP Model is just one model out of many that NLP
practitioners are talking about. But it is one of the more popular ones.

------
hyperion2010
I've gotten to the point where I use this intentionally. I usually think of it
as being the beneficiary of some pretty good hardware that just happens to
live in the same skull as me.

------
gfwilliams
I get this too - thought it was just me/my family.

I never seem to actually 'dream' the answer, or know what it is ahead of time.
It just seems obvious when I look at the code again later, and I totally rely
on it now.

As others have said, actively thinking about the problem makes it less likely
I'll solve it. Usually I just keep looking through my open issues, maybe
writing a few lines, until I get that feeling I know how to do it.

Any other disciplines where this is 'a thing' \- or is it just programming? I
heard someone mention maths...

~~~
phee
I definitely experience it a lot with math. I think the way we learn and
"write" math is somewhat different from how our brain does it. So you need to
give it a bit of time to translate everything to its language and back to the
formalism we use.

Sometimes I feel like a problem is way easier in unconscious space, like I'm
sure solution is there, I can almost see it but it needs time to encode it in
the much slower conscious form.

------
callesgg
Explaining this like there is some sort of magic second you is a bit strange.

The way i see it is not something that is solved while i don't think about it.
Rather it is the brain moving information around and placing it in spots that
fit and make it easier to access making the solution seam obvious.

~~~
kesor
This is not the first time it has been called "Magic". For example in "The
Structure of Magic, Vol. 1: A Book About Language and Therapy" the book
explains how people create inner models of the world to represent their
experience and guide their behavior.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0831400447/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0831400447/)

------
UhUhUhUh
I'm not a professional developer but I also found that the solutions I find,
the elegant ones, always come this way. My only conclusion is that this
process is not algorithmic. Somehow, something top-down takes over the normal,
trained, bottom-up. I refuse to name this thing as god or magic or whatever.
It has no name yet and I don't need one.

------
amelius
Sometimes I wonder if I actually consist of multiple consciousnesses at the
same time, all wondering what the heck the others are doing. And I don't mean
that in a pathological way.

~~~
steveeq1
There's a GREAT book that discusses this phenomenon called "Society of Mind":
[https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-
Minsky/dp/0671657...](https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-
Minsky/dp/0671657135)

Every HN'er should read it. Basically, we have all these "mini-mentalities" in
our brain, but they "talk" (or don't talk) together in different ways.
Definitely interesting if you're an AI guy.

------
vnsjbuvbhs
I get this all the time when coding. I'll either write some crappy code that
works but isn't elegant, or I'll hit a wall. Then either I'll go for a bike
ride and get the answer, or I'll wake up in the morning and just type in the
solution.

Thing is, it only works if I really care about the problem. I have to have
gone through a period of trying to see it from multiple angles and failing to
find a nice solution. I have to have tried and failed. I never get the answer
for free.

I've even dreamed of coding the solution, either seeing the code or some
geometric solution in my dream. When I see the code in my dream, it's not
readable, it's just the "form" of the code.

edit: it's almost as if conscious thought is "programming" my subconscious to
find a solution

~~~
hesdeadjim
"I have to have tried and failed. I never get the answer for free."

Absolutely my experience. One person who changed my entire belief around
creativity is John Cleese. His basic premise is that creativity is all about
hard, really hard work. You will spend the majority of your time coming up
with the obvious ideas, and only after exhausting them will the truly creative
ones happen.

More often than not I will do exactly this and it isn't until a night of sleep
afterwards that the best ideas surface. This has been my experience with tough
problems in coding as well as those with game design.

------
BoppreH
For mind bending check the great explanation from CGP Grey, "You are two"[1],
which argues the two brain hemispheres can operate independently.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8)

~~~
smnscu
You beat me to it. One of my favorite videos ever (more
[https://goo.gl/o0zYbu](https://goo.gl/o0zYbu)), puts a lot of stuff into
perspective.

------
base698
This is similar to the dual process theory outlined in, "Thinking Fast and
Slow". It's partly why interviews are so hard. Your subconscious, system 1
mind, alerts you to solutions and danger and you need system 2 analytical
reasoning to explain solutions. Unfortunately your system 2 doesn't work very
well under stress.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory)

------
rini17
If you want to glimpse how your subconscious puts the pieces together, I
recommend "image streaming" technique. It's possible and so fascinating to
observe how your mind always tries and tries and tries to connect/combine
various concepts until it latches on to something that manifests as conscious
thought, and then goes on, creating images in the process.

------
mslupski1
Great article! But I think you're missing the main point that you're not a
software-development machine - you are a walking, talking, living human. And
what you've described is the same decision making process described years ago
in books by such renowned authors like Agatha Christie. Admittedly, she wrote
fiction - but read at least one novel about Hercules Poirot, and you'll notice
a pattern of thinking that is exactly like what you've described. The
brilliant Belgian detective with a carefully maintained moustache would gather
all evidence, observe everything he could regarding the case he was solving,
and eventually find the right answer bubbling up from his subconscious. Same
thing with Sherlock Holmes, same with Colombo if you're into all that stuff (I
definitely am). Just because you're a software developer doesn't mean you're
suddenly not a human anymore. The fact that your subconscious mind gives you
the answers is simply how it works, and there's no way around it. For
reference, see the Learning How To Learn course on Coursera -
[https://www.coursera.org/learn..](https://www.coursera.org/learn..). -
luckily they haven't made this one paid-access only, so you can enroll and see
the first few videos to learn how your brain... learns, and comes up with
conclusions and solutions to the problems you're facing. The most important
thing I remember from the course is that our brains work in two states -
focused and diffused. In Focused mode you kind of direct your pattern of
thought from node to node, you're in control of your thought process but have
access to a small database. In diffused (or relaxed) mode, your brain does the
work for you, accessing a vast database in your brain that you can't recall
using short-term memory. Thus the feeling that solutions, or conclusions come
to you, but aren't devised by you.

But if you didn't do the work of accumulating information and gaining
experience everyday, your brain wouldn't give you those solutions/conclusions
at all. So in reality it is you solving those problems all the time.

------
perlgeek
Working things out from first principles is possible in principle(sic), but
usually requires too much processing power. Chess players get better because
as they practice, the memory many constellations of pieces relative to each
other, and what outcomes they favor.

The same applies to many mental skills: you learn about problems and possible
solutions, and then when you approach new problems, you recognize parts of
those problems, or structural similarities.

How likely is it, that given the C language reference, and some hardware
specification manuals, you'd arrive at the Linux kernel, with no programming
experience? Possible, but only in the theoretical sense.

The message behind my ramblings is that you should embrace your experience and
intuition rather than striving to work from first principles.

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cdevs
My assumption for this has always been I've had time to check off why my first
group of ideas won't play out well "like chess moves" which leads me to a
better more thought out move. This new idea is created with the reasons why
you dot want to do your other idea "cost to much, burns to much CPU , over
engineered whatever..". Takes time to narrow down what you really want to do
and yelling out 3-4 ideas the first minute is a good start but giving it time
is important.

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djfm
Glad to see I'm not the only one to feel like this!

Sometimes when I'm working on something really hard I purposely go to sleep in
order to keep thinking about the issue in my half-sleep, when the limit
between conscious and unconscious thought starts to fade.

Then more often than not I wake up with an uncontrollable urge to implement a
crazy solution that often happens to work.

I believe the credit is still mine, and the mind works in mysterious ways.

------
dekhn
I didn't really understand how to solve recursion until I spent a day thinking
about it, then tried to fall asleep. the solution appeared in my half-asleep
mind, fully formed. I woke up, wrote it down, and went back to sleep. In the
morning, I typed in the program and it worked on the first try (until I
inicreased the recursion depth beyond what my 286's stack could handle and it
crashed).

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jarnix
Obviously it's the intuition, it hits you when you're not expecting it. It
happens to me with music or any side project I could have. Also it happens
that I solve a problem in the morning without thinking about it. We should
have a subconscient IDE, it would make wonders.

Also, keep a paper and a pencil next to your bed just in case you think about
something in your sleep, it helps you fall asleep better.

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wiesses
I'm just going to leave this here.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome)

(And yes, I've woken up in the middle of the night and had to start working on
my computer because the solution to a problem came to me in a dream.)

------
Ologn
For amateurs to become better chess players, they:

* Learn basic endings like KKR

* Review their tournament length games for where they made sub-par moves

* Learn tactics like pin and fork

* Replay grandmaster games

* Do two to mate chess problems, and other such problems

* Learn strategies like best placement of pieces, proper pawn structure etc.

* Learn openings (when one is more advanced)

Some of these can be reasoned out or explained step-by-step. Some can not -
like doing chess problems. How does that make one a better player? In some
ways it does not make sense, but in some ways it does - after doing many chess
problems, I start "seeing" two to mates when they appear on the board, whereas
I may have missed them before. When you do dozens, or hundreds, or thousands
(Polgar book) of these two to mate problems, and redo them until you can see
two to mates within seconds, your brain gets good at pattern matching, and you
become more adept at seeing two to mates when they appear on the board during
games.

One interesting thing is the first time you see a two-to-mate, it may take a
few minutes, maybe even 20 minutes to find it. After subsequent review it may
take a few seconds. Do this thousands of times, and it shifts from rational
analysis to pattern matching.

------
kareemsabri
Not sure how much should be attributed to the subconscious, and how much to
cognitive impairment due to tiredness.

------
MaysonL
See _The User Illusion: Cuttiog Consciousness Down to Size_
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106732.The_User_Illusion](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106732.The_User_Illusion)

------
FullMtlAlcoholc
Ive always believed this was true and now youve provided the science to back
up my assertion.

Any difficult concept I've learned has co. e to me when I havent been actively
rhinkong about it, Voila moments if you will

------
marmaduke
> It totally works but whose work actually is it? I feel like I'm taking
> credit for someone else's graft.

Probably true in this age given how much interaction with other develops we
have

------
Klockan
Everything you can't write down as a program is actually done by your
subconscious, meaning that all of the hard steps are done by it.

------
merrickread
The solution often lies in a good distraction

------
nashashmi
My subconscious mind is a better driver than I am. the moment I start
thinking, I make mistakes.

------
corysama
The book "Hare Brain Tortoise Mind" is a great exploration of this phenomenon.

------
ashleypt
look up hammock driven development on youtube by that clojure guy. covers this
in depth

------
bluebeard
The collective subconscious and the ability to tap into other people's
experiences. Dead or alive.

