Re: Decatonics

I wrote...
>...and in the past, you've used this argument to say that
>'propriety doesn't matter', which is true but incomplete,
>since it assumes the strictest possible definition for the
>term "propriety".

Maybe this is just another instance of our differences in
thinking styles playing tricks on us. The word "propriety",
and I see a mass of stuff that R. was doing, while you see
a function of scales that returns a boolean. It's what
makes you such a good proof-reader!

-Carl

--- In metatuning@y..., "clumma" <carl@l...> wrote:

> The word "propriety",
> and I see a mass of stuff that R. was doing, while you see
> a function of scales that returns a boolean. It's what
> makes you such a good proof-reader!

What makes me such a lousy proof-reader?

>>The word "propriety", and I see a mass of stuff that
>>R. was doing, while you see a function of scales
>>that returns a boolean. It's what makes you such a
>>good proof-reader!
>
>What makes me such a lousy proof-reader?

Your messages seem as good as average around here, which
is good company if you ask me. But if you're like me,
you usually don't proof-read your outgoing mail at all,
so it's no test of it. Anyway, if you aren't good at it
I wouldn't know why.

My boss reminds me a lot of Paul. She sees everything
in such a low-level way... it goes beyond just proof-
reading. Maybe I'm only making a big deal of it because
it's so foreign to me -- I'm a completely top-down
thinker -- but it sometimes seems like magic the way she
solves problems. If I already have a suitable structure
built I'm at least as good as her, but if I don't she'll
have the answer and I'll still be trying to figure out
the problem!

I can actually remember the few instances of answer-
before problem I've had in my life. Most memorable was
this puzzle Drive Ya Nuts. It had 7 hexagonal nuts that
fit together on 7 pegs. The faces of the nuts were
numbered 1-6... you have to get them on the pegs with
adjacent numbers matching. Somehow I just saw that one
of the nuts was different, so there were only a few first
moves to try (that nut on an edge peg or the center peg)
which I could do in my head, and I just put it together.
When I figured out what I had done I calculated that the
puzzle was impossible to brute-force by hand, so they must
expect you to solve it that way, but I was still thrilled.

-Carl