The advice about "chunking" when writing new code does not apply when, like the cartoon character, you are debugging, perhaps post-facto, an event in a complex system where you must recreate the state while considering multiple hypotheses. You are constructing and exploring a fault-graph, formulating various 'experiments' you can try next to prune (or expand) the graph, weighing the relative costs/benefits of each next action, and assessing your confidence in multiple beliefs. All this with imperfect information (e.g. as the cartoon shows, missing course code; but also empty commit messages, obscure or obsolete comments.
The most useful 'chunking' I do is to actually write down the multiple hypotheses and evidence pro-and-con. Often the mere act of putting the idea into words helps, and at least it gives me something to come back to when I get interrupted.
In the Rosinante trilogy of Alexis A. Gilliland the autonomous AIs are self-owned corporations, and indeed are sometimes addressed with the word "Corporate" as a title, somewhat like "Mr" or "Ms". This is of course fiction; while much of the engineering in the series seems plausible I have no idea if the legal theories are. Worth reading anyway, the AIs are charming.
Could not read the article (the paywall locked me out) but the benefits of states in reducing violence are discussed in Jared Diamond's "The World Until Yesterday".
The most useful 'chunking' I do is to actually write down the multiple hypotheses and evidence pro-and-con. Often the mere act of putting the idea into words helps, and at least it gives me something to come back to when I get interrupted.