Thread by @TaliaRinger

Mushroom foraging is a really fascinating area combining intuition with structure. Another fun source of inspiration: I am a member of a mushroom ID group on Facebook. Often, when a user posts a photo, it's not enough for an ID, so experts ask for specific information

https://twitter.com/TaliaRinger/status/1387788913469652992

They might ask, "where was this found?" Or "can you take a photo of the gills?"

A distinguishing feature of experts is the ability to quickly identify the right questions to ask to arrive at a positive ID more efficiently and with high certainty

Is there any work on this kind of thing for software systems? I'd like to use something like this to build proof automation at some point. But it also seems cool for lots of learning tasks

Interestingly, after observing the group for long enough, I have learned many of the right questions to ask when presented with an image that is not enough to ID a mushroom

So I play a game with myself when I see a mushroom photo: I try to identify it and, if I fail, I try to predict the questions that experts in the group will ask in the comments. Then I check and see if I was right

From this I've learned general principles like minimal pieces of information (say, what tree a mushroom is growing on) that distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous lookalikes

This means I can ask other people those questions, but I can also ask myself those questions, so I've gotten really good at identifying edible mushrooms in the PNW