What happens when you get there? What do you feel?
In the context of “just the very first step” and “slow way, way down”, I notice that I enumerate the possibilities (turn or continue), create space for the answers to “what happens if I?” for each possibility, and then my eyes want to follow those paths out one at a time (or kinda gestalt whole-maze-at-once, for one this simple) and come back and compare those two answers to “what happens if?”. Then again, I tend to rely heavily on spatial thinking, and I’ve put many hours into trying to empathize with little machines who can’t see the maze from the birds-eye view like I can.
Now go back to the beginning of the maze, and this time, try taking it algorithmically. Imagine reaching out with your right hand to touch the wall, and keep your hand in contact with the wall the whole time you walk forward.
Feels like there’s not that “stop” imposed as it was in the first instance. Feels also like once I orient my avatar of myself in the maze to make sure it’s the right hand on the wall, I throw out the “which way I’m facing” data because I know it’d be trivial to recalculate later if you asked for it.
Also feels like you could as easily have asked for the left hand. I had to look back and check to do the right-hand-on-wall technique; I realize now that I reflexively simulated left-hand-on-wall and the resulting deja vu upon returning to the first square. I suspect that this is because I prefer to keep my right hand free when exploring a new place, because I’m right handed.
Go back to the beginning again, and notice exactly how your default strategy feels different.
I worry, here, that I might do a better comparison if I’d been nudged to name and snapshot the feeling of the default solving. The worry might be unfounded, though—looking back (glad I started a comment there!), I see how my default solving parallelized solving all the prospective paths, reminiscent now of that slime mold that they tricked into reinventing the Tokyo metro system.
There is a certain way it feels to recognize that turning left cannot lead you to the exit faster than going straight.
Feels like building something unambiguously adequate-or-better for the task at hand. Feels like replacing a bunch of arithmetic with a single integer. Feels like choosing an additional axiom to free up logic for less-certain parts of the problem.
I have a word for it, actually. It feels like reifying. Feels like what I’ve usually thought the compiler people meant when they use that word.
How would you describe the main sensation by which you navigate when you encounter a maze?
I usually use the name “logic” for it. This may be wrong, or mismatched from how others use their words. There’s a solidity to it (and the word ‘solid’ may indeed share roots with ‘logic’?). It’s the part with the bricks and the good straight boards, the part where you don’t have to revisit a conclusion to make sure it’s still true once you confirmed it. It’s the work stereotyped as being for men, fix the car this once, build the deck this once, dig a cellar out and we’ll have a cellar forever: things that change slowly enough that the change is negligible. (Contrast that against the work stereotyped as being for women, the constant maintenance of keeping on sweeping the floor that keeps getting dirty again or keeping on washing and folding the clothes that wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they just stayed the way you left them.)
Where is the lever that moves your mind into contact with physical necessity?
What is it like to be out of contact with physical necessity?
...that’s my marginalia from a single read of this post. If I think more things about it later, I’ll try to remember to come back and leave another comment.
In the context of “just the very first step” and “slow way, way down”, I notice that I enumerate the possibilities (turn or continue), create space for the answers to “what happens if I?” for each possibility, and then my eyes want to follow those paths out one at a time (or kinda gestalt whole-maze-at-once, for one this simple) and come back and compare those two answers to “what happens if?”. Then again, I tend to rely heavily on spatial thinking, and I’ve put many hours into trying to empathize with little machines who can’t see the maze from the birds-eye view like I can.
Feels like there’s not that “stop” imposed as it was in the first instance. Feels also like once I orient my avatar of myself in the maze to make sure it’s the right hand on the wall, I throw out the “which way I’m facing” data because I know it’d be trivial to recalculate later if you asked for it.
Also feels like you could as easily have asked for the left hand. I had to look back and check to do the right-hand-on-wall technique; I realize now that I reflexively simulated left-hand-on-wall and the resulting deja vu upon returning to the first square. I suspect that this is because I prefer to keep my right hand free when exploring a new place, because I’m right handed.
I worry, here, that I might do a better comparison if I’d been nudged to name and snapshot the feeling of the default solving. The worry might be unfounded, though—looking back (glad I started a comment there!), I see how my default solving parallelized solving all the prospective paths, reminiscent now of that slime mold that they tricked into reinventing the Tokyo metro system.
Feels like building something unambiguously adequate-or-better for the task at hand. Feels like replacing a bunch of arithmetic with a single integer. Feels like choosing an additional axiom to free up logic for less-certain parts of the problem.
I have a word for it, actually. It feels like reifying. Feels like what I’ve usually thought the compiler people meant when they use that word.
I usually use the name “logic” for it. This may be wrong, or mismatched from how others use their words. There’s a solidity to it (and the word ‘solid’ may indeed share roots with ‘logic’?). It’s the part with the bricks and the good straight boards, the part where you don’t have to revisit a conclusion to make sure it’s still true once you confirmed it. It’s the work stereotyped as being for men, fix the car this once, build the deck this once, dig a cellar out and we’ll have a cellar forever: things that change slowly enough that the change is negligible. (Contrast that against the work stereotyped as being for women, the constant maintenance of keeping on sweeping the floor that keeps getting dirty again or keeping on washing and folding the clothes that wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they just stayed the way you left them.)
What is it like to be out of contact with physical necessity?
...that’s my marginalia from a single read of this post. If I think more things about it later, I’ll try to remember to come back and leave another comment.