Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's also called the law of "Uphill Analysis, Downhill Invention" which states "It is much more difficult to guess the internal structure of an entity just by observing its behavior than it is to actually create the structure that leads to that behavior."

Been reusing and repeating this one quite a lot, since I saw it mentioned in one of this year's RubyConf keynotes: https://blog.jessitron.com/2019/11/05/keynote-collective-pro...

(There is a blog-post version behind this link as well, in case anybody wanted to skim the contents rather than watch video of the entire talk to find out how it fits in.)



Uphill Analysis, Downhill Synthesis is a major point in the book Vehicles. [0]

Fascinating thought experiments.

Here’s an introduction on YT [1], though it really only scratches the surface.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483485.Vehicles

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A-fxij3zM7g




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: