Saturday, June 29, 2019

A link to an article from Nautilus by Noson S. Yanofsky




I found the following worth a read -- or two.

Kolmogorov Complexity and Our Search for Meaning


From the last two paragraphs of the linked article:

While we travel through the seemingly random events in our life, we are searching for patterns, and structure. Life is full of “ups and downs.” There are the joys of falling in love, giggling with your child, and feeling a sense of great accomplishment when a hard job is completed. There is also the pain of a crumbling relationship, or the agony of failing at a task after great effort, or the tragedy of the death of a loved one. We try to make sense of all this. We abhor the feeling of total randomness and the idea that we are just following chaotic, habitual laws of physics. We want to know that there is some meaning, purpose, and significance in the world around us. We want a magical story of a life, so we tell ourselves stories. 

Sometimes the stories are simply false. Sometimes we lie to ourselves and those around us. And sometimes the patterns we identify are correct. But even if the story is correct, it is not necessarily the best one. We can never know if there is a deeper story that is more exact. As we age and suffer from ennui, we gain certain insights about the universe that we did not see before. We find better patterns. Maybe we get to see things more clearly. Or maybe not. We will never know. But we do know that the search is guaranteed to never end.

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