Subject: Re: All instances From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 20:59:52 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3202405190186931@naggum.net> * Erik Naggum > ... Smart people > simply do not waste their resources doing things that are inefficient. > This means that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to figure > out the least resource-intensive way to do something. ... * Huaiyuan <huaiyuan@rac1.wam.umd.edu> > The hardest part is, figuring out the least resource-intensive way to do > something itself is usually rather resource-intensive. Please read "The Joy of Figuring Things Out" by Richard Feinman. I urge you to grasp some of the undiluted pleasure of making hard things simpler through the expenditure of sometimes vast intellectual effort. Curiously (at least to people who do not figure things out), figuring things out is (usually) a one-time thing. After you figured it out, through that ardous process, others need not (ideally) go through the same steps and the same toil to get there. Structured, published, and organized, this is called "research". Many young people prefer laziness now to working hard to make their life easier as they grow older and wiser. I have no sympathy for such people at all, but I do not have to do anything to take a little (admittedly evil) pleasure in their (future) misery: Like figuring things out is its own reward, laziness is its own punishment. But, hey, feel free to optimize the path of your life at every step. Some of us like to plan ahead and usually made the steps we do today a very, very long time ago. Not only does it make everything _much_ easier to know what to do beforehand, you _know_ when you are taking a detour. Those who do not, often fail to take the necessary steps back to the path they originally _wanted_ to follow themselves. #:Erik -- Intellectual laziness is punishable by brain death. It is a natural law.