The Lego Complex
Last Xmas, my sister got me a Rubik's cube. I've never once bothered to sit down and try to solve it, but I keep it here on my desk anyway as a reminder of how instructive it can be when people close to you act on plausible but mistaken assumptions about who you are. I used to think I liked puzzles too, but my sister's gift helped me realize that I don't -- what she didn't understand, and what I now do, is that what I like is mysteries.
A narrow, well-defined problem that already has a known, algorithmic solution just isn't interesting to me. An intellectual challenge can only hold my interest if the answer isn't easy to find. I feed on the irreducible thrill of putting pieces of information together to complete a picture that's somehow more than the sum of its parts -- using the known to triangulate on the unknown.
A narrow, well-defined problem that already has a known, algorithmic solution just isn't interesting to me. An intellectual challenge can only hold my interest if the answer isn't easy to find. I feed on the irreducible thrill of putting pieces of information together to complete a picture that's somehow more than the sum of its parts -- using the known to triangulate on the unknown.