Well your last paragraph was interesting in a way. In fact I don’t understand it. The point of a puzzle is to stretch and work out your brain, not arrive at an answer asap. If you have a bus full of hostages whose fate depends on an arithmetical problem, it’s indeed wiser to ask someone else. But such situations don’t occur often. In fact I sometimes explicitly ask other people to avoid giving me any hints because I want to solve the puzzle myself. Asking for help is analogous to taking the bus instead of your morning run :-)
But well, I guess if you don’t enjoy puzzles already, then saying things like “c’mon jump in, the water’s fine” isn’t going to influence you much. Some things you really have to try before you can see the fun contained within. I think most things I enjoy in life fall in this category...
I hate being frustrated. It happens to me very easily. I hate not knowing the endings to stories, I hate not knowing what I’m getting for my birthday, and the only way I can not hate not knowing the answers to math problems is by not giving a flying fuck about them at all—which isn’t conducive to expending effort on solving them. I’ve generalized the “stop giving a fuck” self-defense strategy to other hatreds-of-not-knowing stuff, mostly to discourage people from teasing me with this neurosis. I believe that other people can enjoy various forms of not-knowing-stuff, or fail to hate it enough to override some competing desire to achieve knowledge on their own. But I don’t.
So basically, I looked at that math problem, sort of cared about knowing the answer, and asked. I got an answer (actually, several) which were quick enough to suit me. If the only way I could have learned the answer were to work it out for myself—or sit through ten minutes of algebra lessons or something—then I would have defensively ceased to care, instead.
Once I know the answer—in this case, that after having gone halfway at 20mph, you need to teleport to get to point B in time—then I can tolerate some further discussion of the scenario or the underlying math (although not arbitrary amounts). This is much the same as how, when I know that character X and character Y in some story eventually get together (or find the MacGuffin, or die, or whatever major plot item), I can often put up with extended periods of wondering exactly when and how.
Well your last paragraph was interesting in a way. In fact I don’t understand it. The point of a puzzle is to stretch and work out your brain, not arrive at an answer asap. If you have a bus full of hostages whose fate depends on an arithmetical problem, it’s indeed wiser to ask someone else. But such situations don’t occur often. In fact I sometimes explicitly ask other people to avoid giving me any hints because I want to solve the puzzle myself. Asking for help is analogous to taking the bus instead of your morning run :-)
But well, I guess if you don’t enjoy puzzles already, then saying things like “c’mon jump in, the water’s fine” isn’t going to influence you much. Some things you really have to try before you can see the fun contained within. I think most things I enjoy in life fall in this category...
I hate being frustrated. It happens to me very easily. I hate not knowing the endings to stories, I hate not knowing what I’m getting for my birthday, and the only way I can not hate not knowing the answers to math problems is by not giving a flying fuck about them at all—which isn’t conducive to expending effort on solving them. I’ve generalized the “stop giving a fuck” self-defense strategy to other hatreds-of-not-knowing stuff, mostly to discourage people from teasing me with this neurosis. I believe that other people can enjoy various forms of not-knowing-stuff, or fail to hate it enough to override some competing desire to achieve knowledge on their own. But I don’t.
So basically, I looked at that math problem, sort of cared about knowing the answer, and asked. I got an answer (actually, several) which were quick enough to suit me. If the only way I could have learned the answer were to work it out for myself—or sit through ten minutes of algebra lessons or something—then I would have defensively ceased to care, instead.
Once I know the answer—in this case, that after having gone halfway at 20mph, you need to teleport to get to point B in time—then I can tolerate some further discussion of the scenario or the underlying math (although not arbitrary amounts). This is much the same as how, when I know that character X and character Y in some story eventually get together (or find the MacGuffin, or die, or whatever major plot item), I can often put up with extended periods of wondering exactly when and how.