frelkins comments on On Doing the Impossible - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 October 2008 03:13PM

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Comment author: frelkins 07 October 2008 02:06:32AM 0 points [-]

@eric falkenstein

"solving little problems"

But you know eric, solving the seemingly little problem often illuminates a great natural principle. One of my favorite examples of this is Huygens, when down with the flu, suddenly noticing how the pendulums of his clocks always ended up swinging against each other. Such a tiny thing, how important could it be? Yet in the end so-called coupled oscillation is everywhere from lasers to fireflies. Never underestimate the power of the small insight.