Diversions

Let's run a second from rage in all its forms, from irksomeness, from weariness and focus on games. Like the games of children. Not the stupid children, not the clumsy children that are more like automata than complex streamlined biological machines. But the children that have the capacity to soak up knowledge like sponges.

I wanted to write this entry because I noticed that Sudoku, which has been sweeping every newspaper leisure section, is similar to minesweeper. Not in the sense that they are both grids and involve numbers. They seem to resemble each other in some abstract superstructure, like a problem space or strategy space, something like that. I'm not a mathematician. If I were, I'd be able to better clarify what I mean to say. So I cannot communicate this without great effort. And if there's anyhting I run from, it's effort. But there is an abstract, profound something behind both these things, and maybe behind puzzles in general. They are my building blocks (building blocks: in the actual sense, not in the abstract sense). They are shapes you learn to manipulate until they become mundane, regularized, automatic. Of course, these shapes are inside our heads, and thus interest me greatly. I will never understand these shapes from an outside-in perspective. Our understanding of brains and matrices of neuronal activity is where our understanding of biology was about 400 years ago. But I assert that we will know the brain's activity from a relatively simple theoretical framework within the next while. Maybe the next century, or maybe two centuries, maximum. The silver snake that is understanding, so repugnant to some, is a versatile creature. No amount of "well, science is not the only way of knowing" will make it so; I think that there are definitely funner ways of knowing (astrology, transcendental meditation, ESP, religious visions, and other aspects of the sordid mess), but why do we think that nature is here to maximize our fun? But understanding is satisfying whether it's fun or not. And we've been pretty good at it. So, to wrap this up, it's not just Sudoku and minesweeper that are connected; they share something with our process of inquiry.

Consider: "If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn."