[HN Gopher] Walking increases spontaneous fluctuations in the brain
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Walking increases spontaneous fluctuations in the brain
Author : d4rkp4ttern
Score : 235 points
Date : 2021-08-30 12:01 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.salon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.salon.com)
| spookybones wrote:
| I've noticed it's much harder to walk in my city and generate
| ideas because there are spontaneous loud sounds and random
| visuals compared to when I lived more rurally. I'm not sure if
| there is a way I can reduce this ... dark sunglasses and noise-
| cancelling headphones maybe, but that seems distracting in its
| own way and potentially dangerous.
| the-dude wrote:
| We have got parks.
| spookybones wrote:
| Unfortunately the only park I'm near is very small, and
| people frequently blast music at it. I could commute to a
| larger park, but that wont work for daily walks.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| We have had a few walking related stories on HN the past few
| weeks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28268136 was
| interesting.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| must be some submarine pr from big walking
| ruined wrote:
| clearly the left media is trying to develop a vanguard of
| hardcore urban communists with calm minds, good
| cardiovascular health, and detailed knowledge of the local
| geography.
|
| quite sinister if you think about it
| hkt wrote:
| The revolution will be pedestrianised
| m0zg wrote:
| Salon, so probably fake news, but anecdotally, I've had a lot of
| good ideas while just walking outside (or in the shower, which I
| suspect could have the same effect). Basically when I'd get stuck
| on something hard at work, I'd lock my machine, leave my phone
| behind, and walk around the building a few times. Usually that
| was enough to figure out how to get unstuck at least, if not
| outright solve the problem. Try this, if you're able, I'm pretty
| sure it's not just me.
|
| It's kind of aggravating that this is not considered to be "work"
| by most people. I'd say those are some of the highest value parts
| of my day.
| brainmapper wrote:
| Oh my this article is painful to read on so many levels. It
| treats as important many phenomena that are either inevitable or
| uninteresting.
|
| (1) The fact that engaging in one task distracts attention from
| another task is obvious. People derive inspiration from taking a
| shower, swimming, biking, playing music and yes, walking. All
| these tasks have something in common, they are different from
| whatever task one was doing beforehand, and they require less
| cognitive focus than many of the things that we do for work.
|
| (2) The fact that noise in the brain is 1/f is not particularly
| interesting. Many natural systems have 1/f amplitude spectra.
| This pattern occurs commonly in multi-scale systems (the brain
| being one example).
|
| (3) The fact that many aspects of brain activity (both signal and
| noise) are affected by aging, consciousness, mental experiences,
| memory and so on is not particularly interesting. Assuming that
| one is not a dualist, every distinct mental state must be
| reflected by some unique pattern of brain activity.
|
| (4) Scientists know quite a bit about where these "spontaneous
| fluctuations" come from. Many of them are a consequence of
| changes in blood pressure, which varies substantially and
| randomly over time (within some finite band, of course). Others
| are caused by mental states that are difficult to measure and
| model, and so are unknown to the experimenter. But just because
| something is noise from the perspective of the experimenter
| doesn't mean that it is noise from the perspective of the brain.
| vadansky wrote:
| I wonder if any of the benefits of walking carry over to biking?
| I've basically given up walking to always biking but after
| reading "Deep Work" I'm starting to feel like I'm missing out by
| not rambling around and zoning out.
| pkghost wrote:
| I'm curious about this, too. I love biking for the distance you
| can travel, the wind, the strength it builds, but I do have a
| distinct taste for walking, though I'd have to think about it
| more to have any ideas as to why.
|
| P.S. a) It's easier to dawdle when you walk, to enjoy the
| particulars of the places you pass; biking is so fast by
| default that you have less time to savor details. b) Biking
| tends to be higher intensity exercise, which may actually take
| necessary energy away from mind-wandering; in fact, my mind
| wanders much less while biking than walking, so I'd guess this
| is the case, but maybe this isn't true for everyone. Moreover,
| biking forces external attention more regularly as you
| encounter pedestrians and traffic at a higher rate
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| That article had a ton of links, but I couldn't find any support
| for the real factual claim that walking increases spontaneous
| brain fluctuations. Would love to see that paper.
|
| For the most part, spontaneous brain fluctuations are studied in
| the context of fMRI. Since you can't walk in an fMRI, I'd like to
| know how they actually measured anything.
| superbaconman wrote:
| Every movement our bodies make will show up in the brain in
| some way or another. This study for example started breaking
| down brain signal "noise" and basically found that the brain
| and body are super tightly coupled. The feeling of the pants
| against your legs and the wind in your hair is gonna show up in
| a brain scan, so of course you're gonna see brain stimulation
| while walking.
|
| > When researchers studied the spontaneous activity of more
| than 10,000 neurons in the visual cortex of mice, they were
| surprised to find it to be rich with information about the
| animals' seemingly irrelevant movements.
|
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/noise-in-the-brains-vision-ar...
| abandonliberty wrote:
| I think the article/salon is optimized for clickbait. It's hard
| to boil down the concept into a couple words.
|
| Dr. Huberman mentions 'Optic flow', likely the same concept:
|
| >When you move through space, whether walking, running, or
| driving, you're in what's called optic flow. Things are moving
| past your retina at varying speed, depending on how fast you're
| moving, but your brain has knowledge of how fast you're moving.
| It cancels out the movement in a way that says, okay, these
| objects aren't moving past me. I'm moving past them. All of
| this boils down to a set of circuits in the brain and body that
| make it so that when we're moving through space, it has this
| property of relaxing us and giving us a sensation that is
| somewhat rewarding. And so what this translates to is at least
| once a day, get out and move. Optic flow doesn't have to be
| fast. It can be at slow speeds. Ideally, it's variable speeds,
| but this, I believe, underlies the sensation, the both calming
| and invigorating and kind of replenishing feelings that we get
| from taking a bike ride or a long run or swimming, for that
| matter.
|
| https://findingmastery.net/andrew-huberman/
| qez wrote:
| > So while my students are out on their walks, they might be
| mind-wandering more than in the classroom, but this is a good
| thing
|
| To be a bit flippant, isn't this obvious? Who thinks that mind-
| wandering is a bad thing? Teachers, I guess. How is it possible
| to be a philosopher without mind-wandering?
|
| > In 2014, a new study showed that walking decreased rational and
| linear thinking and increased divergent thinking and imaginative
| mind-wandering
|
| The only thing problematic here is the decrease in "rational"
| thinking. I think in context it means something closer to rigid,
| concentrated, and well-defined (ie - uninspired).
| justinzollars wrote:
| In college I took a lot more random walks. I'm going to try to
| build those into my day.
| afarrell wrote:
| It would be nice if there was an app that a could let a bunch of
| people tune in to an audio stream hosted by a phone within 30
| meters. Then, a professor could lead walking lectures without
| having to turn around and shout.
|
| This would also be useful for city tours, outdoor dance parties,
| and churches with hard-of-hearing parishoners.
| Graffur wrote:
| Is this an audio guide available at lots of museums?
| api wrote:
| Could be done with WiFi direct on phones that support it.
|
| The fact that WiFi didn't originally ship with (and in many
| cases still does not support) simple P2P with nearby devices is
| just unbelievably stupid. Apple still insists on their own
| stupid standard instead of the actual standard too, at least on
| iOS devices. (I think Macs can be coaxed into the standard
| mode, but Macs are real computers.)
| webmaven wrote:
| I am lookng forward to SDR-capable hardware falling in price
| to the point that it becomes the default for most devices. At
| that point, not only do wireless protocols become field-
| upgradeable (including more exotic options like UWB), but
| decentralized mesh-network protocols become installable as
| well.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Why not a 'tour guide portable FM transmitter' (less than $100)
| and a bunch of dollar store FM radios?
| afarrell wrote:
| Because few people already carry FM store radios in their
| pocket, so relying on them requires solving a logistical
| problem.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It will be more reliable than any solution based on either
| (i) a battery-powered web server, or (ii) mobile internet.
|
| And latency will be constant and near-zero.
|
| I suspect that's why a couple of the use cases you
| mentioned (city tours, dance parties) are usually addressed
| with FM radio and not apps.
|
| Perhaps there's a way to do this with a modern bluetooth
| stack. But none of the offline messaging apps I've seen
| (Bridgefy, Meshenger) support group audio.
| athenot wrote:
| True, but the FM solution could really be low latency,
| unlike the digital rube goldberg machine equivalent.
| tejtm wrote:
| Some, many? most? cell phones have a builtin FM receiver so
| in many cases no additional HW should be needed
|
| [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cell+phone+FM+tuner
| unwiredben wrote:
| FM audio on yoru phone usually relied on the headphone
| cable being used as an antenna to receive the FM signal.
| With the demise of wired headphones, especially for high-
| end phones, this is unlikely to be viable.
| tejtm wrote:
| that is insidious. Hopefully there is an alternative
| dangling a charging cable or someone coming up with an
| antenna case that can boost the signal. So far I'm good
| with just not buying one like that.
| bserge wrote:
| Something like SoundSeeder (works via WiFi)
| totetsu wrote:
| I think this is planned for a future version of bluetooth.
| pomian wrote:
| Brilliant idea. We have thought of that before, when in a
| museum, where you know there is so much more history and
| information than just a label. Surprised no one had done it
| yet.
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| Could we geocode the lecture-snippets, so the statements
| persist at location? That way, one could advance at ones own
| pace. Or map it to a route of ones own design, while keeping
| the pace..
| asoneth wrote:
| I recall projects that did something like this. Besides
| museums and historic neighborhoods, one memorable
| application was at a graveyard. Reenactors read letters and
| diary entries written by the deceased. The closer you were
| to the writer's tombstone, the louder their audio. From far
| away all you heard was a combination of barely audible
| voices. I believe the relevant terms are "audio walks" or
| "phonoscapes".
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| I have created something similar for a museum. I placed
| bluetooth beacons behind the exhibits, and when visitors
| approached them the app automatically switched to the
| "page" for this exhibit. The app was able to display texts,
| videos, images and audio files.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| A lot of tour buses catering to speakers of foreign languages
| do exactly this.
| cgb223 wrote:
| Alcatraz almost has this!
|
| Due to the pandemic they made an app where you can follow
| along and listen to different parts of the tour
|
| It's not very "smart" I.e. not location aware to start the
| next prompt but honestly much better than those clunky audio
| tour boxes
| wil421 wrote:
| The museum would lose revenue because you wouldn't have to
| pay to rent their audio devices.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| You could pay for access to the audio stream just as well.
| stemlord wrote:
| I am a software dev for a company that builds museum
| exhibits. Many museums these days have bespoke web or
| downloadable apps that serve audio tours, sometimes
| activated based on location through QR codes, computer
| vision, beacons (iBeacons, Eddystone beacons), or RFID
| scannable bracelets given to every visitor.
| afarrell wrote:
| Could you please pitch this app as a more scalably-
| profitable revenue stream for your employer?
| zinclozenge wrote:
| Aruba Networks does this with their Meridian division.
| stemlord wrote:
| It's not really "an app". Every museum wants a different
| MVP, and I just listed some of the common tech involved
| in most of them. We don't have a turnkey product for
| this, we build out a custom thing every time, because
| clients come to us specifically for one-of-a-kind
| technical implementations.
| asoneth wrote:
| Bloomberg Connects[1] is an attempt to do something like
| this. An institution connects their CMS and then visitors can
| access additional text, audio, video, images using triggers
| in the museum space.
|
| However, to my knowledge it does not support live synchronous
| audio.
|
| [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.bloombe
| rg....
| bigdict wrote:
| Could be accomplished with BLE broadcasting.
| soylentgraham wrote:
| I've tried using bluetooth in a museum exhibition before and
| noise from wifi and other equipment rendered it pretty
| hopeless... but may have been the modules I was using...
|
| Flawless at home/office. Useless on site
| afarrell wrote:
| This app indicates that existing Android and iPhones can
| already act as receivers. Can you (or anyone more familiar
| with the tech) verify that is true?
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27294649/i-want-ble-
| broa...
| bigdict wrote:
| Receivers of BLE broadcast packets? Yes, that's how devices
| are discovered. It's just that you can also stuff those
| packets with a payload and transfer data (one way) without
| a connection.
| birbs wrote:
| Couldn't you use Zoom for that?
| xur17 wrote:
| Zoom isn't really setup for something like this. Ideally you
| want something that is one to many (broadcast), is low
| latency (since the participants would be able to hear the
| professor talking both in person and over the app), and is
| reliable.
| asdff wrote:
| Conference call
| xur17 wrote:
| Latency on that would be even worse than a zoom call.
| y4mi wrote:
| So basically a mobile hotspot with a webrtc webpage on which
| your headset microphone gets relayed? Participants can scan the
| QR-Code to join the hotspot WLAN and get directly redirected to
| the webrtc session
| bilekas wrote:
| This is actually a really good idea. The hotspot could just
| locally serve the client and server side. Some pre connected
| devices could be distributed also for the elderly or the
| disabled.
|
| Then you could package it with a "creation studio" to create
| your own version for tourguides, museums, etc. Resell some
| hardware also as per requirements. You've got yourself a nice
| little business that seems useful for the business and
| client.
| afarrell wrote:
| That sounds even better than what I was thinking of because
| you wouldn't need people to download an app. Also, ESPN and
| Sky could have a version of that which it could license to
| broadcast the audio of a football game at bars or pubs
| OJFord wrote:
| Oh boy, if ever there was a time to invoke the Dropbox
| comment!
|
| Seriously though, I think it's an under-explored area.
| Several years ago[^] I thought it could be a fun way to do an
| ephemeral social networking type thing on the tube; then
| something a bit similar ('YikYak'?) became briefly popular
| (in the UK at least) but just using GPS or whatever for
| location, still with a central server.
|
| I think there's plenty of interesting things you could do
| ephemerally, P2P over Bluetooth or mobile WLAN.
|
| ([^] edit: that's not some weird claim to fame, I mean it in
| the sense of I've long thought this should be good, but then,
| I've not bothered to do anything about it, and neither it
| seems has anybody else, so...)
| mro_name wrote:
| Kinda near-range walkie, nice. Bluetooth transmission should
| do, shouldn't it?
| pc86 wrote:
| You just invented poorly implemented radio.
| mathgeek wrote:
| I imagine that a silent disco setup would provide this rather
| well. Might need one with a better form factor for walking
| outside, but the technology for broadcasting locally to
| headsets has existed for a while now. Museums likely have these
| deployed already.
| afarrell wrote:
| The trouble is that you need to distribute headsets to
| people, hope they don't get broken, and then collect them
| back. If there is both an android and iPhone app, then you
| can let people use their own earbuds. You'd merely need to
| tell people "open Soapbox and pick #gymnosperms. We'll set
| out on the trail on 8 or so minutes"
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| > headsets to people, hope they don't get broken, and then
| collect them back
|
| Many museums do this already for their self-guided audio
| tours, it's pretty old tech but it works super well.
| wongarsu wrote:
| And then you have to deal with people who don't have
| earbuds with them.
|
| Distributing headsets is a lot more reliable
| dpcx wrote:
| Until you think about people that have devices that don't
| use headphone ports, or don't have bluetooth on their
| phones (both, IIRC, are very small counts, but
| potentially a problem). Not to mention if you're sharing
| headsets that, unless they're all coming in plastic bags
| suggesting that they're new from the factory, everyone
| else's germs are all over them.
| t0mbstone wrote:
| We already have this. Just have the professor start a Zoom call
| on their phone and have everyone else join it using their
| phones while wearing headphones and their microphones muted.
| atatatat wrote:
| ...that's AM/FM etc radio.
| jt2190 wrote:
| Yes. I think I've even seen this implemented.
|
| Certainly some drive-in theaters in North America worked like
| this. There would be signs telling you to tune your car radio
| to such-and-such frequency to hear the film audio. Here's a
| picture of one: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3186/2718300357
| _ec1b9f3f45_z.j...
| Ancapistani wrote:
| These still exist :)
|
| https://kendadrivein.com/faqs
| sidpatil wrote:
| Yeah, this is totally doable with walkie-talkies. The biggest
| drawbacks I can identify would be audio quality and
| interference.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Within a distance you can walk, it should be pretty easy to
| find a band with minimum interference even in a crowded
| metro. Also, quality won't be as much of an issue as range.
| There are pretty low limits on how much power you can use
| on the FM bands without a license.
|
| Source: I drove all over a crowded metro in the early 2000s
| with one of those fm transmitters for playing audiobooks to
| my shitty car stereo. 3 station presets was enough for the
| whole area.
| douglaswlance wrote:
| You could do a group call where everyone else is on mute.
| mshaler wrote:
| "Only ideas won by walking have any value."
|
| -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Whenever I see an article like this in one of the most activist
| so called news outlet, I can't stop myself asking - what is their
| motive for pushing these? May be to increase residential real
| estate pricing?
|
| I mean sure, walking is good - I don't need salon to tell me it
| is. But question rather is why are mainstream outlets like salon
| rather pushing these narratives of benefits of walking lately?
| The activism real estate these outlets have are valuable and
| limited so the motives are always something I question.
| afarrell wrote:
| Because they want people to read things, view ads, and maybe
| subscribe to their publication.
|
| Its similar to the motive for mundane stories published in
| magazines 30 years ago: so people read them in exchange for
| money.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > May be to increase residential real estate pricing?
|
| Only if the readers aren't paying attention. Research is also
| simultaneously showing that urban citizens walk more than their
| suburban counterparts.
| bostonpete wrote:
| I'm not really understanding the parent commenter's point,
| but your comment seems like a non sequitur. How does
| "residential real estate pricing" imply anything about urban
| vs. suburban?
| hkt wrote:
| I would assume the person you're replying to is alluding to
| higher costs and faster rises in urban areas (at least
| historically, YMMV since covid)
| bawolff wrote:
| Are you really saying that salon is a front for big-real
| estate?
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| It must be the opposite to their own political dogma, so "it
| must be evil".
| asutekku wrote:
| Because it generates clicks and clicks generates ad revenue.
|
| A longer answe is that a healthy lifestyle is more and more
| trendy and people want to know, why does walking help them also
| mentally. This is as they want to find an easy answer to their
| problems, such as stress. After reading the article, they will
| then share the article with their social circle with a message
| claiming "This is so true! After I started walking I started
| feeling so much better", which generates more clicks, since the
| other people want to get help too.
|
| It's seriously not that complicated.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| I disagree it is just for click revenue. Outlets like salon
| and NYTimes don't need to worry about click revenues, their
| ad capital has been growing more than ever.
|
| My cynicism comes from the same angle when I see every other
| week some health benefits from drinking coffee coming out of
| some studies pushed by the same outlets. Surely it has
| nothing to do with a billion dollar industry funding and
| pushing benefits of drinking coffee through these outlets
| right.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My mental model is that the brain has some kind of pseudorandom
| idea generator. Like any pseudorandom generator, it needs a wide
| array of inputs. I bet walking around provides all kinds of
| muscular and sensory inputs, as well as increased blood flow and
| engagement of most parts of the brain which is precisely what is
| required for pseudorandom creativity.
| 65 wrote:
| Why would it be pseudorandom? If the brain is natural, wouldn't
| it just be random?
| bigdict wrote:
| Randomness is an abstraction for "we don't know how it
| works".
| tompazourek wrote:
| So... Random = Pseudorandom?
| dagw wrote:
| I mean, maybe. It's a rather philosophical question in
| the end. Can there be true randomness in the universe or
| is everything in some way deterministic, but it's just
| that the underlying system is so complex that it can
| never be computable. And is a deterministic, but
| uncomputable, system actually deterministic?
| ginko wrote:
| FWIW, the hidden-variable theory, that the universe is
| deterministic and we just lack all information to predict
| it, has been considered and rejected by physicists.
|
| https://www.askamathematician.com/2009/12/q-do-
| physicists-re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-
| variable_theory
| tompazourek wrote:
| Reminded me of the "Free Will" thesis by Sam Harris.
| matthoiland wrote:
| If the entire nervous system contributes to cognition, then you
| would assume that stimulating more of the body would stimulate
| more cognition - or "pseudorandom ideas".
| AQuantized wrote:
| There's such a thing as overstimulation. There is probably an
| optinal degree of stimulation to encourage cognition without
| overloading it.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This also explains why I need time off after hard, creative
| work; or why vacation is so helpful. I need to repopulate
| entropy.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| The three times I have my best ideas are: walking, showering, or
| that state when I'm drifting between awake/asleep.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I also get ideas reading. Which, really, makes me a bad reader
| because I get distracted.
| mtgx wrote:
| I think all of these might have to do with the brain's alpha
| waves. You get into a "relaxed" mode where much of your brain
| activity is suppressed, which I guess means your brain's
| resources can be focused on the thing you need to solve most at
| the time.
| e40 wrote:
| I agree with the first two, but for me the latter doesn't
| produce much.
|
| I will literally get a shower if I'm working on a hard problem
| (and a walk is not convenient). So many times I solve the
| problem, sometimes after having sat at the computer for hours
| trying to solve it.
| ralfn wrote:
| Does any proof exists that humans think 'rationally' even when
| they are solving essentially deductive puzzles?
|
| Im not an expert about neurological stuff, but did anyone
| discover any hardware in our brains that does something beyond
| 'induction'?
|
| Is this notion of divergent/converged thinking based on anything
| objectively measurable? How do I make a machine that tells me if
| a given thought is convergent or divergent? Or is this all just
| cultural constructs similar to believe systems?
|
| I'm especially tempted to be extra skeptical with anything that
| attributes a particular metaphysical superiority to human
| thinking over machines or animals. Is that skepsis an example of
| convergent or divergent thinking?
|
| I'm sorry if my question make an actual expert cringe. But
| perhaps it can be an opportunity to enlighten simple minds like
| me further...
| mro_name wrote:
| I doubt that humans, being the herd animals that they are, use
| anything other than mere perceptibility (= volume and
| repetition possibly weighted with the status of the speaker) to
| reach consensus. As usual, 10% of the population are not quite
| like that.
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| I think what we call rationality is the most likely (aka most
| active path, when some cost timer in the brain runs out), one
| can restart it and train it for long periods, but usually its
| attention is fleeting, because attention is expensive and
| should be on important things, like food, group, booty and
| nothing.
| Aerroon wrote:
| This isn't the answer to your question, but perhaps an
| additional point to consider.
|
| One way humans are rational is when they "reason on paper". We
| write down most of the initial conditions and then use an
| algorithm (that's also written down) on them to get to the next
| step. We write down the result we got. Then we use an algorithm
| again on this result to get to the next step etc. This is how
| mathematics and science works. Obviously this is cultural - we
| learn to do this by learning to write, to do mathematics etc.
| It's not something ingrained to us.
|
| I think humans can do something similar in their head, but it
| is _greatly limited_. The limiting factor is memory - an even
| remotely complex algorithm will eat up all your memory and you
| will forget about the results you had already got.
|
| Eg adding 419875 + 87458284 uses the same algorithm as 356 +
| 472. We can easily do both on paper, but the former is
| difficult to do in your head, whereas the latter is fairly
| easy. You give someone an external memory (eg notes) and they
| both become easy again.
|
| An external memory keeps our reasoning rational.
| webmaven wrote:
| I'll leave aside the question of deduction for the moment, but
| it seems quite clear that induction isn't the whole story. At
| the very least, we have to include abduction (ie. fuzzy pattern
| matching, or leaping to conclusions) in our repertoire.
| Jensson wrote:
| The evidence is that a group of humans can extremely reliably
| solve plenty of different classes of deductive puzzles, with
| error margins as close to 0 as you can find in the universe.
| Without that ability modern society wouldn't be possible.
| webmaven wrote:
| The question is whether deduction is implemented in hardware
| or in software (that is: is it neurological or cultural).
| krona wrote:
| To make the case for irrationality, you must make the case
| using truth, objectivity and reason, and therefore you're
| implicitly committed to them.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I was pondering an extreme 'sudoku' with the fewest of possible
| starting numbers: one. Then I realized you could solve it by
| starting with any solved sudoku and shuffling columns, rows,
| block-columns, and block-rows, in a manner similar to learning
| how a Rubik's cube works. That turned it into a vastly simpler
| deductive problem. I would say that this was creative but not
| irrational.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Just a small side note, you can solve any such sudoku in the
| same way you can fill a blank sudoku grid with a valid game
| state. Take the first 3x3 square and fill it with consecutive
| numbers 1,2, ..., 9. Then take the next 3x3 square and fill
| it with 2, 3, ..., 9, 1. Do the same for each next square and
| you'll end up with a valid board. To solve the one-number-
| only sudoku you would then simply take the 3x3 square the
| number is in, fill it with consecutive numbers around the
| given number, and then fill the rest of the board similar to
| the above.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Not much different. The advantage with using validity-
| preserving operations is that you can follow-up with more
| operations to satisfy additional constraints.
| bob229 wrote:
| Salon is garbage
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