this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
88 points (88.6% liked)

Asklemmy

43826 readers
863 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm sure pirates knew the answer. Probably fighter pilots as well.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm a little sad nobody with the relevant mathematics background has jumped in. These puzzles are considered; a simple version is the lion-hunting-man where both have the same speed and infinite turning speed (eg, this paper, where the arena they play in varies).

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Very cool. I love that it exists, I love humanity that some of us are capable of understanding, or even generating such things, but wow. Some people are a lot smarter than me.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If it's any consolation, you are almost certainly within ~3 years of understanding the solution and a dozen variants. It's not a super deep area. Probably doesn't really require calculus (you need continuous as in 'the lion doesn't teleport; that's cheating', but I think not much more).

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

We must always consider capability. If it requires 3 quarts of understanding and I've only got a 1/2 gallon container, it's not all getting in there.

We aren't all the same. I am content that there are people way smarter than me. I've met some. They're usually cool.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

You can be smarter than you are now. Effort will reward you. Take a peek at the growth mindset. I think Hubberman did a podcast on it, and his content is usually of good tier.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Fortunately containers can get bigger =)

While we aren't all the same, there's a difference between things that require holding 8 complicated things in mind at once, and things that require a little language learning and the intelligence to solve a crossword. This is closer to the latter - like doing a crossword in Spanish. You need to know a bunch of little things, but learning them is basically all tedium and not brilliant insights. (Taking these puzzles, creating a dozen new variants, and solving all of those probably does require managing a lot of complexity. But to understand the work of others, is not so bad)

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Agreed. I think "Flowers for Algernon" hit me hard. And I had an experience in college where I accidentally took a philosophy class called "Critical Theory Since Plato" when I first realized that I'm not very smart, just a little above average, and some people live life on a while different level than I do.

And don't get me started on "Electromechanical Wave Theory," a book I bought from Goodwill. I wanted to learn more about that, but I think it was written by aliens.