Favourite Problems
In 907 there was so much information in the world that you could never hope to imbibe it all. It was too much. Simply undigestible.
Thankfully, all that information was not available to eat. It resided in other people's minds. Minds who were mostly far away. It resided in books. Books which were rare and far away. An information glutton did not risk reading themselves into the oblivion of the shallows.
A short 600 years later, the info-glutton could move to a city, or chance upon a now slightly less rare book and gorge to their hearts content. Still too much to eat in the world, but still mostly manageable for what's close at hand.
Cue the 19th century and you're fucked. Cheap books and many minds and you surrounded by information. Information tempting you to scatter your mental faculties across too many mental hooks.
Cue the 20th century, and you're fully fucked. Cheap books out the wazoo. Radio, television and masses of minds moving the mills of industrial science. Enter Feynman, and his method to restrict his diet to only those questions he deemed his 'favourite problems'. Open-ended curiosities that he found himself returning to again and again. A beautiful lens through which to view the world of information; one which focuses it elegantly on the questions most important and intriguing to you. One which right-sizes the info-glutton’s mouth to their belly.
Cue the 21st century and you're so fucked it isn't worth dwelling upon. Feynman's method is a sinking life-raft; but it is a life-raft and you're in no position to discard flotsam on this freezing Atlantic evening.
I've practice this method in fits and starts since 2020. Here's a look at my own 12 favourite problems, as of June 2022. This is mostly the residue of problems I was most intrigued with in 2020 and 2021 and the years leading up to Coivd.
When I joined TikTok it took an offshoot in other short-term directions.
They've evolved somewhat since I left TikTok. I'll update that shortly, unpick it a little, and try to understand what the evolution has been. And what caused that evolution. And perhaps chance a guess at where it might be leading.
