- In bayesian search theory a good (sometimes optimal) approach is to maximise information gathered per unit effort
- In debugging, a step can vary by several orders of magnitude in amount of effort required to check a theory (eg, from 'type ls' to 'spend several hours implementing a theorised fix/tracking framework/etc)
- Consequently, the probability of a hypothesis can be quite low and still be the optimal thing to check first, if the effort to test it is also low.
So, the 'one weird trick' is to look at all the evidence you can look at very quickly, even if the connection to the problem is tenuous. 95% of the time the tenuous ones don't pay off, but when it does, you're colleagues are like 'WTF? how did you think of that?' and as advertised, you look like a genius.
