Re: let's outgrow puzzles

[Hugh Haskell <haskell@ODIE.NCSSM.EDU>]

John Denker replied to my comments, in part:

> > And you don't think that there are
> >people who dive for pearls because of their beauty irrespective of
> >their value,
>
> Huh?  Their value is their beauty -- or do you know a use for pearls that I
> don't know of?

Their beauty derives mostly from how hard it is to get them. If one
could pick them off the beach like sand, they would have virtually no
value no matter how beautiful we consider them. There are those who
consider them beautiful and are willing to pay the necessary price
for that attribute, but the price is more dependent on rarity than
beauty, and rarity relates to how hard they are to get.

> >or just because they are hard to get to?
>
> Diving for garbage, just because it is hard to get to, doesn't make it more
> valuable.

If it's hard to get to, it's unlikely to be considered garbage.
Consider moon rocks. Ordinary rocks of no particular distinction, but
highly prized by collectors simply because of how hard it is to get
to them.

> >Of course, I'm not interested in the ones who only do cross-words or
> >jig-saws or whatever.
>
> Exactly my point.  Given two experiments that will shed equal amounts of
> light on the mystery of the universe, why would anybody choose the harder
> experiment, just because it is harder?

Feynman used to resent doing things the easy way. He tried to find
hard ways to do problems. Said it was more challenging that way.
Isn't it ironic that he found the easy way to do QED?

> My point is that there are all too many people out there who have been
> trained to respect an experiment for how difficult it is.  Humbug!  We
> should most respect an experiment that gets the beautiful and/or useful
> result *without* unnecessary fuss and bother.

I think you overstate the case. People respect an experiment that
gets the results, and if it happens that it is a difficult
experiment, they may respect the experimenter for being willing to
take the trouble, but if someone else does it later by an easier
method, the respect will be transferred to the latter. Just because
an experiment is difficult, doesn't mean it entails unnecessary fuss
and bother. Lots of experiments are just plain difficult. Often the
difficult experiment has to be done before the simple and elegant one
can be done, because it is only possible to see the easier path after
the harder one has been beaten.

Sometimes the first experiment is the "quick and dirty" one that
verifies the existence of a phenomenon, while the more difficult
experiment that gets the really good data still has to be done. Often
the first experimenter gets the credit for going first quickly that
the later experimenter should have gotten because the later
experiment was the scientifically important one.

> If you want to go climb a mountain the hard way, go ahead -- but don't
> expect me to pay for it.
OK, I promise not to ask you to finance it, but if there weren't
companies who were willing to finance such craziness, I assume for
the publicity value, nobody would be doing it. Yet they do. Which is
not to argue that everything should be done the hard way, but
sometimes there are things to be learned from doing something the
hard way. The elegant experiments are not always the easiest ones.

Bottom line: most of us consider everything we do to be
puzzle-solving and we do it because we get a thrill from solving
them. The same thrill that Ziman referred to in his quote earlier
regarding crosswords and jig-saws. It is important for scientists to
maintain a child-like enthusiasm about the world, to be curious and
to enjoy solving puzzles of all kinds. Of course I don't want someone
working for me who does crosswords all day every day (unless my name
is Will Shortz, and I am the crossword puzzle editor of the NY
Times), but at the other extreme would you want someone writing for
you who cared nothing about words?

Hugh


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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