The Maze and the Labyrinth(neckar.substack.com)
neckar.substack.com
The Maze and the Labyrinth
https://neckar.substack.com/p/the-maze
5 comments
this article has much to appreciate -- this kind of story content is often in "long form" as part of literature, symbolic art, poems or stories of the gods. The visitor to the arts has to go through some volume to pick out the parts for themselves. This article is on modern media (internet) with clear graphic design, is told starting with a popular media reference (horror even), and speaks in the "tour guide" / explainer voice. Therefore the presentation is more like a museum exhibit and less like experiencing a drama or dream yourself.
With that said, it has an uplifting and hopeful ending, and seems to be written in genuine good-will for the reader. Thanks for posting!
With that said, it has an uplifting and hopeful ending, and seems to be written in genuine good-will for the reader. Thanks for posting!
Hm, a user walking the structure is a bit interesting to think about in the computational sense. The user is the CPU, but what "power" of thinking is needed to solve the maze?
For reference, theory of computation (as I recall) divides problems into state machines/regexs (see: YOU CANNOT PARSE HTML WITH REGULAR EXPRESSIONS), stack machines, and finally full turing machines.
A labyrinth is a series of steps executed serially with no branches or jumps or loops, and is guaranteed to terminate. It is the lowest/simplest form of computation. It is an MBA/executive-level state machine of the simplest order.
Almost every maze I've ever seen is just branching that, if you have a stack for memory, will terminate. Mazes are probably technically solvable with state machines, although I wonder for the traversal if you need a stack for remembering the directions you already traveled. A stack machine in computation implies a sequence of input that is processed and you have knowledge of where you are in the state machine, but a true maze participant (as evidenced by the thread innovation) DOESN'T have knowledge of the state machine node they are in. So a maze might actually be a stack machine problem, since you need the thread.
Each branch in the maze is a "push" decision, and when the thread is retraced from a dead end, you "pop" back to the node. So it might be a stack machine problem.
If the maze has loops (that's REALLY mean), it implies a turing machine... although I guess a thread-as-stack could navigate that too. Maybe all mazes are stack machine problems. But if I squint, a maze with loops implies undecidability.
So why am I reducing the fine philosophical waxing in such a cold mathematical manner.... I guess I'm trying to imply that the states of life the article says the types mirror (labyrinth is the blind determination of youth without the complications of complex life, maze is the complicated existence of real life with so many dizzying options but more like post-college where you are discovering the world, maze WITH LOOPS is the dangerous addiction/mental illness/ weaknesses that is where people get truly lost.
For reference, theory of computation (as I recall) divides problems into state machines/regexs (see: YOU CANNOT PARSE HTML WITH REGULAR EXPRESSIONS), stack machines, and finally full turing machines.
A labyrinth is a series of steps executed serially with no branches or jumps or loops, and is guaranteed to terminate. It is the lowest/simplest form of computation. It is an MBA/executive-level state machine of the simplest order.
Almost every maze I've ever seen is just branching that, if you have a stack for memory, will terminate. Mazes are probably technically solvable with state machines, although I wonder for the traversal if you need a stack for remembering the directions you already traveled. A stack machine in computation implies a sequence of input that is processed and you have knowledge of where you are in the state machine, but a true maze participant (as evidenced by the thread innovation) DOESN'T have knowledge of the state machine node they are in. So a maze might actually be a stack machine problem, since you need the thread.
Each branch in the maze is a "push" decision, and when the thread is retraced from a dead end, you "pop" back to the node. So it might be a stack machine problem.
If the maze has loops (that's REALLY mean), it implies a turing machine... although I guess a thread-as-stack could navigate that too. Maybe all mazes are stack machine problems. But if I squint, a maze with loops implies undecidability.
So why am I reducing the fine philosophical waxing in such a cold mathematical manner.... I guess I'm trying to imply that the states of life the article says the types mirror (labyrinth is the blind determination of youth without the complications of complex life, maze is the complicated existence of real life with so many dizzying options but more like post-college where you are discovering the world, maze WITH LOOPS is the dangerous addiction/mental illness/ weaknesses that is where people get truly lost.
Knowing the difference it saddens me that my native language doesn’t differentiate between them which makes me wonder which languages make this distinction.