Random-ass facts that verge on being meaningless.

[cadhla]

10. I like to read 'The Long Walk', by Stephen King, while taking long walks. 'The Long Walk' is about a game show-like endurance test where a hundred boys start walking, and keep walking, without rest, until all but one are dead. I find this oddly soothing. If I knew why, it would probably disturb me

Comments

[twfarlan]

If you understand a mystery, then it loses the quality that makes it powerful.

Just a thought.

[rysmiel]

I profoundly disagree.

Rainbows are beautiful. Understanding how the simple basic principles of reflection and refraction bring rainbows about, to my mind, only exposes you to a deeper underlying beauty in the rainbow as manifest6ation of some beautiful simple elegant bits of physics.

[batyatoon]

Yes, but the beauty of a rainbow (or of anything really) has nothing to do with the power of whatever mystery it possesses.

[rysmiel]

I suspect my disagreement with that is at too deep and tangled an emotional level to drag up into words. Which is a bit annoying, really.

[twfarlan]

I have wondered at times if beauty and mystery are not inextricably intertwined. I've often found that a thing is more enticing, more appealing, if I don't yet know it. "Familiarity breeds contempt" isn't accurate... more like familiarity breeding ennui. It's like with a new toy; once you wear the shine or the "new" off of it, unless you imbue it with a deeper meaning, then you'll lose interest and eventually drop it by the wayside to gather dust.

That may just be the maudlin side of me talking, of course. ;)

[twfarlan]

A stage magician never tells the audience how the trick is done. For most people, knowing how the trick happens spoils the enjoyment of the trick. The not-knowing leaves you able to wonder, while the knowing gives a certain satsifaction... but no wonder. The power of the illusion is gone.

Still, to each their own. For some, knowing is the source of enjoyment rather than the illusion itself.

[rysmiel]

For most people, knowing how the trick happens spoils the enjoyment of the trick. The not-knowing leaves you able to wonder, while the knowing gives a certain satsifaction... but no wonder.

This reaction is entirely emotionally alien to me; and while I have no trouble at all believing it true that most people feel as you describe, I get a bit irked at decisions and pieces of art based on the axiom that all people work that way.

For some, knowing is the source of enjoyment rather than the illusion itself.

I neither feel, nor understand why, the two should be mutually exclusive; I see them as complementary, each enhancing the other. I tend to put more time and energy into understanding the underlying systems of things, but only because they are, by definition, less easily visible.

[twfarlan]

...I get a bit irked at decisions and pieces of art based on the axiom that all people work that way.

Well, I'll point out that rainbows themselves are not intrinsically "beautiful." It is only the subjective perspective that labels them "beautiful" or not. I don't personally think they're all that pretty, when compared to something like a lightning strike, but that's my point: to each their own.

With some things, there is no middle ground, though. Sticking with my example, you either know or do not know how a magic trick is performed. Now, perhaps a person can enjoy both knowing how the trick is done and still appreciate the artistry that goes into the performance of stage magic, but if you know how something is done, you cannot simultaneously enjoy it in a way that is based on not knowing how it is done. If you enjoy the challenge of figuring something out, once you do figure that thing out, you no longer are enjoying a challenge, but the satisfaction of having succeeded.

[rysmiel]

Sticking with my example, you either know or do not know how a magic trick is performed.

Maybe. I know little of stage magic: I had been thinking more in terms of certain novels I really enjoy, to which I find myself going back and back over, and seeing new subtleties in and aspects of how they achieve what they achieve each time.

if you know how something is done, you cannot simultaneously enjoy it in a way that is based on not knowing how it is done.

Agreed, given the premise of enjoying things in a way specifically based on not knowing hoe it's done in the first place, which I think is another thing I'm not wired to get; enjoying the result of something really seems to me orthogonal to whether or not I know how it was achieved.

If you enjoy the challenge of figuring something out, once you do figure that thing out, you no longer are enjoying a challenge, but the satisfaction of having succeeded.While I can connect to both of those feelings, they both seem to me secondary; it is observing the smooth operation of complex systems

[cadhla]

For some folks, yes, for others, no. I'll never totally understand the Wood -- it changes too often -- but finding out that what I thought was gravity is actually inertia is a little disconcerting.

[twfarlan]

Understandable.

Mayhap you're to be the Teller of Tales and not an actor upon its stage.

[cadhla]

That would be pretty much the conclusion, yes. Or maybe not. If I can't understand the Wood, I doubt anyone else is going to.

[twfarlan]

We only know of it what you tell us. Still, it's possible for others to gain insights that we in our own minds would never achieve. The professions of dream interpreter and psychoanalist are founded on that belief.