When you dismiss a working method as 'naive,' you may be missing something non-obvious
tak3sh8 · x · 2026-10-13
The author shares an epistemic takeaway: when something works very well and you dismiss it as "that's just a naive special case of XX," it often means you've missed some non-obvious aspects of it. As an example, he recalls reading Cosma Shalizi's notes and finding it amusing how the author can be "so right and so wrong at the same time." The core point: treating "looks too simple" as grounds for rejection is a flawed heuristic — effective methods often carry hidden value that isn't immediately visible.
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