Tuesday, January 08, 2019

One is tempted to say, "Great minds think alike," but perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that great problems attract great minds.

--- Judea Pearl, in his 2018 book with Dana Mackenzie,The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect, p. 313


Quote in context:

Unlike Kruskal, we can draw a diagram and see exactly what the problem is. Figure 9.5 shows the causal diagram representing Kruskal's counterexample. Does it look slightly familiar? It should! It is exactly the same diagram that Barbara Burks drew in 1926, but with different variables. One is tempted to say, "Great minds think alike," but perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that great problems attract great minds.