It's always easier in hindsight.

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It's always easier in hindsight.
Number: 69  
Date created: 2002-09-10 21:29:37
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Over the years I've heard so many people say things like "That was easy to come up with, I could have thought of that.". It usually occurs when a subject of how a scientific discovery was conceived or a style of music was invented or a problem was solved. People who say "That was easy" really have no idea what they are talking about. They fail to realize just how hard it was to come to the solution prior to there being one.

If these people are so smart and think that coming up with E=mc2 was easy, or that it was trivial to write the music that Bach did, or to invent a tape recorder. In hindsight, of course it's easy to invent those things, you already know the concept, design and implementation. But if these people who say they could have done them are so smart, then why don't they invent/solve/compose something that hasn't materialized yet. Like the next big musical style or a better computer storage medium or solve NP in N time, or prove Fermat's last theorem. I'm sure once those people solve those problems, we'll all be able to look back and say "Yeah, I could've done that."