Science – it’s hard…

Science is hard.

Well, I guess that should not really surprise me; smart people do science. Well dumb people do science, too, but they suck at it. Now it remains to be seen, were I fit into that.

But what am I talking about? One day, you make huge progress, and you feel really good, because you feel like you finally know about the stuff you are working on. But then, the day after, when you use your new knowledge on that paper you have been reading some weeks ago… then you find out, what else is in there, that you don’t understand. Earlier, you did not even notice all the details, you where not understanding.

But that is not bad! Now I know, what to look into, next. When will that end? Well, possibly never. All new understanding will link to more stuff I don’t (yet?) understand. It only stops where you stop it, of course. And that is part of the art. Deep search vs. wide search; neither is the correct thing. I’m sure I good link to some xkcd here, but chances are, that you either allready know it or you don’t care about such stuff. It doesn’t really fit all that well anyway.

I’m aware, that all this talk is pretty unspecific, but this post is to be light reading. Let me say this much: I knew I did not understand, how CNNs work. Now I do. Of course I don’t know why they work, nor what any values in them represent (well, who does?). But I understand what structure of values is produced and why – and what they are supposed to mean in a very abstract why. I get, what the ominous features are about. What features they are, in a specific case: I knew I would not understand that!

But the CNN part is far from everything. Guess it’s back to the papers for the next days. Maybe some real details then.