I had a weird IT problem that took me a long time to figure out, because it was so elusive and hard to reproduce. The NUC that used to upload the radiation data was acting up; it would just freeze for some reason. The first thing I did was reinstall Windows 11. Then I installed Windows 10. Then recently it actually got worse; it would stop refreshing data and I would come down to see it stuck at max fan speed and hot, probably 100% CPU for some reason, and not showing image on the screen nor reacting to keyboard. I concluded it’s probably fucked on a hardware level and put a HP mini PC there, with Windows 10. That didn’t fix anything, because it would stop refreshing data and I would come down to find the Radiascan software stuck. It turned out it wasn’t the software; the device itself was disconnected for some reason, and I first suspected some power saving feature, and went through everything in both Windows and UEFI; after each modification I had to leave it running to see whether it would hang, and it invariably did, in intervals from almost immediately to almost a day. As you can imagine, testing that takes a lot of time; a day per tweak, basically. Eventually I guessed the device drew too much power from the USB while charging its batteries, which overheats the USB controller or something and triggers a disconnect, so I tried putting a powered USB hub between the computer and the device, and that didn’t do anything, but I felt I was on to something, and then I remembered seeing that the USB cable connecting the device is frayed to the point where I can see the wires inside, and thought it can’t be, because it connects and reads data, right…? Right? I managed to find another mini USB cable somewhere, changed it, and it solved the problem completely.
Sometimes the solution to a complex looking problem can be remarkably simple.
I find the same when working with painful conditions. Sometimes stuff looks like horrible diagnosis and very complex illness, and sometimes 'it is' (like Parkinson's) but then you think about various afferent or efferent neurological patterns and then it turns out the stuff isn't 'that' complex at all and you can help with some simple stimulations. People just don't like connecting the dots and thinking about truly solving problems.
I'm thinking… I seem to make a similar mistake elsewhere, too, for instance by assuming that if someone has a problem, it has to be something complicated, and I think it's out of respect, because I assume they would have figured it out themselves and solved it already if it were simple. It can't be laziness, cowardice, or lack of motivation.