
Pauli Effect - MichaelAO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect
======
femto
Its opposite is the "technician effect", whereby your malfunctioning system
always works when the technician (who is going to fix it) is present.

Incidentally, the antidote to the Pauli Effect is to tape a raw sausage to
your circuit. Everyone knows that your circuit always works when you put your
finger on it, and the sausage emulates your finger. (There is actually some
truth to this joke, as the sausage/finger provides a little parasitic
capacitance, which can make an unstable RF circuit become stable.)

~~~
martin-adams
And of course there are the demo fairies, who magically make your fully
working prototype stop working only when presented in front of an audience.

~~~
david-given
Have you heard of quantum bogodynamics?

The theory is that there's an elemental particle, the bogon. When this is
absorbed by a piece of equipment, it frequently malfunctions.

Good engineers, over time, become bogon sinks, so that when there's an
engineer around the bogon absorption rate of the equipment they're working on
drops. Meanwhile, managers tend to become bogon _emitters_. So, give a device
to them and it instantly fails. Pauli, here, sounds like he was a massive
bogon source.

This handily explains the effect where the device will reliably fail but when
an engineer shows up to look at it, it works fine. It also explains why demos
are so flaky: all those people watching the demo are emitting a massive bogon
flux...

~~~
calgoo
I read the first line as: "Have you heard of quantum Bogeyman"

Going to get a second cup of coffee now...

~~~
Bromskloss
"Our lord and saviour."

------
tvural
Pauli was one of many physicists at the time who were totally disinterested in
experiments and equipment. This put Heisenberg in some hot water during his
doctoral exam:

"When an angry Wien asked how a storage battery works, the candidate was still
lost. Wien saw no reason to pass the young man, no matter how brilliant he was
in other fields"

[https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199801/heisenberg.c...](https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199801/heisenberg.cfm)

------
biswaroop
This actually happened in our lab when the experiment only worked when a grad
student stood in a specific location far away from the control computers.
Turns out he was blocking a stray laser beam, and now we have a curtain that
replaces him.

~~~
perilunar
Stray laser beams? I'm glad I don't work in your lab...

------
bbcbasic
This is probably a result of the same bias that when you buy a new car you see
it everywhere (confirmation bias?) so when Pauli is present and an experiment
goes wrong its another point on the tally of Pauli Effect anecdotes. When he
is present and it all works OK no one cares. But obviously this is meant as a
bit of fun.

~~~
DigitalJack
Bader-meinhoff effect

~~~
pmiller2
Appropriately enough, I just mentioned the Baader-Meinhof effect in a
discussion only a couple of days ago.

------
sebastianconcpt
Would be interesting to see data on conditions with and without Pauli present
to remove biases. Pity we don't have him anymore.

If we have a guy like that again to suspect of such effect, then we could try
the isolation of parameters to see if there was in fact just a bias or it
could lead to deeper issues. And interference from quantum biology might not
be completely out of the question
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_biology](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_biology)

------
jheriko
so even the smartest of us are susceptible to magical thinking and
superstition it seems... :)

~~~
Inlinked
Once you start looking for it, it becomes fairly common :)

August Kekulé's work on the structure of benzene came to him in a dream:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekul%C3%A9#The_ourobor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekul%C3%A9#The_ouroboros_dream)

Ramanujan credited his mathematical skills to a Goddess:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan#Personalit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan#Personality_and_spiritual_life)

When Einstein met Tagore, "Einstein: Then I am more religious than you are!":
[https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/04/27/when-einstein-
met-t...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/04/27/when-einstein-met-tagore/)

Pierre Curie: "There is here, in my opinion, a whole domain of entirely new
facts and physical states in space of which we have no conception."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie#Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie#Research)

Kurt Gödel proved God exists:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof)

And take a look at the recent popularity of Discordianism and Thelema among
programmers.

------
kan1shka9
nice !!

------
vinchuco
Thanks, Obama

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thanks-
obama](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thanks-obama)

~~~
vinchuco
Not sure I understand the downvotes.

~~~
Inlinked
It's a low effort meme-like post that adds nothing to the article or
discussion. Those are frowned upon at HN.

It's not impossible to make joke-y replies to posts and receive upvotes, but
it takes a lot of practice (or authority).

If a 100 people would post one-liner memes then the comment section would be
no fun to read. It used to be a strength of HN to have an incredibly
resourceful comment section with good debate. It was not uncommon for the
author of a programming language to chime in on a discussion about said
language.

See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

> The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments.
> Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.

> The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment
> teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some
> consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more
> information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience. Whereas
> comments like "LOL!" or worse still, "That's retarded!" teach us nothing.

Edit: I see that your account was created 1499 days ago. This may make my
reply seem silly (also coming from a newly created account). It was a sincere
attempt at answering your downvoting concerns though.

~~~
vinchuco
I know this. More than a silly post it was pointing out the similarity between
the thanks Obama meme and the Pauli effect. Yet something like this made it to
the front page.

~~~
Bjartr
I think if you actually made clear that you were mentioning the meme in order
to make a comparison, as opposed to "merely" invoking it, the comment would
have been received better.

~~~
vinchuco
Very likely.

Also, groupthink.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink)

