Heuristics intersect

There is only one thing that I enjoy more than solving problems. I like to take something that has absolutely nothing to do with my goal and mix it with what I am doing to make it more difficult and then try and see if I can apply something that seems to have no direct relationship to better solve my basic goal.

I just got a book called "How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics" second edition. It is really fascinating as it presents a new way to understand a basic principle that I understood, but had never realized until it was presented. People are poor problem solvers because they are never forced to solve problems. In math we are given a set of methods and a set of problems and asked to use the limited method set to solve a problem. It reduces the factorial possibilities in a solution and explains in part why an adult can be less effective than a fifth grader.

The second reason is because they are freshly remembering facts ( objects ) that have no real significance in the world as a whole as they are a member set of a virtually infinite set of objects.

The book is fascinating and if you are not good at solving problems it will just make you mad as it exposes an inherent flaw in education. It does seem to present a way to learn these things after the fact and I intend to gain from that. I was able to beat the average in the first few problems so I assume that I will be buried in complexity later. I already see many ways where I can apply what I have already learned from this book and I am only 20 pages in.

I missed matrix math in high school by one year even though I was in advanced math. They decided to teach matrices one year after I left. Learning it by myself was difficult and in some ways it was better for me to do it the hard way because it forced me to learn how to learn

This book is not for the feint of heart, I am guessing that it will be a week before I see much daylight except for programming and testing the new things I learn. There in my mind also is the mix of SQL Python, AI, and openGL along with the other things that I have been studying and testing. I feel there will be some good connections made here.

On another note, the government of the United States has officially been subverted and is no longer a free nation. Not a real shocker, it will get much worse and then it will get worse than that. Power corrupts utterly corrupt people.