From Playful Dams to Complex Challenges

This is a link post. When I was a really small kid, one of my favorite activities was to try and dam up the creek in my backyard. I would carefully move rocks into high walls, pile up leaves, or try patching the holes with sand. The goal was just to see how high I could get the lake, knowing that if I plugged every hole, eventually the water would always rise and defeat my efforts. Beaver behaviour.

One day, I had the realization that there was a simpler approach. I could just go get a big 5 foot long shovel, and instead of intricately locking together rocks and leaves and sticks, I could collapse the sides of the riverbank down and really build a proper big dam. I went to ask my dad for the shovel to try this out, and he told me, very heavily paraphrasing, 'Congratulations. You've [...]

---

First published:
April 10th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rLucLvwKoLdHSBTAn/playing-in-the-creek

Linkpost URL:
https://hgreer.com/PlayingInTheCreek

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.