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Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
21–30 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#22I don't know, because once I understand something it always seems very simple to me.
Then try a fun game: explain it to someone else, preferably outside of the problem domain. The premise you're capturing is great, because society benefits from your hard-won battle to distill that information into something that can be passed along to "future generations"
That's why I have the greatest respect for high quality documentation because a lot of energy went into crafting it
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#23I'm not sure there's anything that I understand, at least not fully. There are things I know a certain amount about, but probably nothing that I understand as fully as I'd like. Also, understanding can be fleeting if you don't think about a certain topic all the time. Take relativity for example: I recall a very specific moment when I was talking to a friend who is actually formally educated in Physics, and we were t…
I was tought special relativity and just "accepted" it because experiments confirm it. During a prolonged period of idleness I sat down and derived all formulas from the underlying Lorenz transformation (basically the pythagorean theorm). I think that helped me understand special relativity.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#24Nothing. There's nothing that I fully understand because there's always another level deeper you can go.
I agree with the sentiment if the "another level deeper" is still the same topic. But, eg., I can be an expert in performant software programming without understanding hardware in depth. Understanding roughly how hardware (eg. word alignment) affects software performance is enough - no need to understand how signals propagate in a conductor.
You might be able to write performant software, but if you can't answer why it works the way it does (requires hardware knowledge), then I would say maybe you don't fully understand it. I think it's impossible to find someone who knows everything.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#25I don't know, because once I understand something it always seems very simple to me.
Then try a fun game: explain it to someone else, preferably outside of the problem domain. The premise you're capturing is great, because society benefits from your hard-won battle to distill that information into something that can be passed along to "future generations" That's why I have the greatest respect for high quality documentation because a lot of energy went into crafting it
That's a good recommendation. On the other hand, there's an added difficulty for me to explain what I know because it's all in English and my native language is Greek. When I try to explain e.g. the subject of my PhD studies to my relatives or friends, I find that I simply do not have the Greek vocabulary to do it.
I started translating one of my papers in Greek just to address this limitation, but I guess I got bored and gave up midway.
I'm fine with explaining it all in English though. At the risk of inducing terminal boredom :)
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#26As others have said, I don't think I fully understand a whole lot! But let me think of it this way: Of all the topics that I know stuff about, which one do I think has the biggest delta between what I know and my co-workers in the same space? I'd say cryptography. I'm not an expert by any means, but even among my co-workers, I find myself explaining a lot of basic concepts before even getting into the gritty.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#27I guess it might be 'graph hashing', also known as canonicalization.
So this is related to some other things, like the Weisfeiler-Leman Algorithm, and Morgan numbers, and partition refinement. The idea is that to compare two graphs (networks, or Eulerian graphs) for equality one way to do that is to 'hash' the graph. The resulting canonical representations of the graphs are then compared directly for equality.
I implemented a couple of different approaches for doing this - one based on a research paper calling the technique 'signatures', and the other based on an algorithm from a book called 'C.A.G.E.S' (can give references in a bit).
For me, the process of understanding how to achieve this meant learning about permutations, group theory, partition refinement, applying permutations to graphs, and so many other things. I think all told it took me more than a year to properly understand and implement it all!
Very fun, but maybe not the best use of time, looking back...
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#28topic: How we understand things and etc.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#29Entropy. It was hard for me to understand this arbitrary rule of things becoming less ordered over time. Was this just a fundamental natural law? The answer is no. Entropy is a logical consequence of probability and time. Why do things become more chaotic over time? Because chaotic configurations have a higher probability of occurring. There are far more disordered configurations of things then there are ordered, thi…
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Re: Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
#30English local government form, function and finances - or at least I used to, 15 years ago. For my sins, I worked as part of the Lyons Inquiry[1][2] team for 2.5yrs.
... And no. It's not all my fault.
[1] - https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/lyons-inquiry-in...