The thought I was expressing is that there seems to be no separate organ at all here and that seems unexpected to me. I would expect there to at least be something like a specialized region. Not just that the eye in general happens to also have this ability.

You can also measure some things in ways that add exactly 0 energy. If some quantum system absorbs exactly nothing of a certain wavelength, that tells you something about the system.

Another way of discovering what increases property X is testing that some change indeed increases property X, while also discovering it decreases property Y.

While attempting to increase both X and Y, they made an intermediate with increased X and decreased Y. Perhaps it seemed a promising starting point to also increase Y.

I don't get the surprise. This is all par for the course in research.

The third of your ‘easiest explanations’ is pretty much the third explanation offered in the article. The article is an object level description of what happened, with little to no speculation, apart from three tentative explanations, and does not endorse any remarkable claims about how the world operates.

You have invented that ‘implication’; nothing in the article even hints at that being the obvious implication and it’s entirely unclear what you “don’t believe” to people that have actually read the full article.

Banging your head against a problem for several hours while not making any progress is frustrating. Not because you are 'unproductive' in the sense of producing value for your employer or customers, but because you are 'unproductive' in the sense of not achieving the progress you desire.

Thus we want to improve our productivity. Not because we need to be productive in a capitalist sense, but because we want to be productive to have the feeling of achieving something.

Whether increasing your productivity comes in the form of going for a walk or getting rid of distractions doesn't change that.

The parent, on the other hand, was responding to someone in an attempt to prove them wrong. By not saying anything that engaged with what the grandparent said, they failed at that.

So I know what I am, but what are you?

I use the term 'race condition' about once a week to point out something may happen before or after something else, because the things are happening in parallel.

Simple example:

me: I just uploaded the file to our shared dropbox

you, refreshing: I don't see it yet

me: race condition