Another sense

[lhexa]

You are probably aware of a certain variety of puzzle, fascinating but frustrating, which evokes a short-lived obsession. Generally, but not always, it's a brain teaser or riddle. I used to value these highly, but now the experience of solving them just seems incomplete. The best puzzles require insight, knowledge, and toil to complete; riddles just require insight, and are as bad as the low-level math problems that just require toil. I think that, in trying to regain my sense of puzzlement, I've had to disregard the feeling of puzzlement, which all around me is a thing of mere entertainment.

To defend myself: the puzzle that loses its charm on having its answer revealed is of little importance. What I value is the state of mind that comes from wondering where rivers come from when they only flow in one direction, or how a system in which few people farm can produce more food than one in which everyone farms, or how there can be a number whose digits have no repeating pattern, or why gravity attracts but never repels, or why it's hard to remember falling asleep. The sense of puzzlement that comes from one of these questions is not satisfied by an answer alone, yet it is rarely given anything else.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dw/]

I've been writing lots of one-line comments to your posts lately, but..

Is the Collatz problem a riddle?

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

*shakes his head* No, but it inspires the same obsessive feeling.