Re: let's outgrow puzzles

[Zach Wolff <zachary_wolff@YAHOO.COM>]

--- John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM> wrote:
> If all you care about is puzzling, you could have
> saved a lot of time and
> money by skipping all scientific training and going
> directly to a career in
> crosswords and jig-saw puzzles.

I'm in the middle of my expensive and time-consuming
scientific training and plan on continuing it because
it will allow me to work through puzzles of true
beauty and eternity as opposed to those as arbitrary
as crosswords.  I don't think anyone has claimed that
all forms of puzzle solving are equal, only that the
joy is indeed derived from the puzzle solving process.

> People should value a scientific result (or any
> other result) according to
> the result, not according to the process that
> produced it.  As the saying
> goes: people dive for pearls because they are
> valuable, not vice versa.

I think this paragraph illustrates that you are
talking about something fundamentally different than
others in this thread.  "People" should value a
scientific result according to the result, if by
"people" you mean everyone.  If by people you mean
those conducting the experiment, this ceases to be
true.  People BUY pearls because they're valuable.
I'd be willing to bet that most pearl divers got into
it because they love diving and the pearls happened to
be a way to pay for their expensive hobby.  Equally, a
salary in a scientific career will pay for my
expensive hobby of trying to dig up some of the
ultimate truths of nature, trying to solve her
grandest puzzles, if you will.

This paragraph also puts you on dangerous ground for
achieving much happiness in life.  A scientist who
enjoys the process of puzzling through nature's
mysteries should be happy doing it.  A scientist who's
happiness is tied only to the results risks being
mired in despair if and when the results aren't quite
as grand as expected.  It's not whether you win or
lose, it's how you play the game.  I can't make you
agree with that, but I know I can play well all the
time and I enjoy having my happiness linked to that
rather than to something as fickle as success.

> I think that the love of puzzles is a phase that
> everybody goes through.  I
> expect people to outgrow it when they are offered
> other, deeper sources of joy.

I'm not dead, so I suppose I can't refute this
entirely, but as I've matured I've watched myself
change in the exact opposite direction.  The payoffs
have become less important as a joy in the process has
overwhelmed me.

In another message John Denker wrote:
Having people care about the result is
part
of the fun.

I weep for you here.  In the end most other people
don't care.  They certainly don't care about even the
most important discoveries in most of today's highly
specialized scientific fields.  Most people don't care
that F=ma.  They care about themselves, their
immediate well-being and perhaps those people
immediately around them and the time immediately in
front of them.  I don't mean to claim that I am an
island, that the opinions of others do not touch me.
I think that having people respect my intellectual
ability, my creativity, and my character are all part
of the fun.  I hope they respect the methods I used,
particularly those of my own invention, much more than
they respect any single result these methods might
bring.  Let them respect one dollar I earn through
hard work more than any lottery jackpot I may chance
upon.  The first is who I am.  The second is only
something that could happen to anyone.

A puzzler for life,
Zach Wolff
University of Arizona


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