Shannon's Learning Mouse Theseus

Theseus was propelled by a pair of magnets, one embedded in its hollow core, and one moving freely beneath the maze. The mouse would begin its course, bump into a wall, sense that it had hit an obstacle with its “whiskers,” activate the right relay to attempt a new path, and then repeat the process until it hit its goal, a metallic piece of cheese. The relays stored the directions of the right path in “memory”: once the mouse had successfully navigated the maze by trial and error, it ...

 Buckminster Fuller's Rules for Knowing if He Was on the R...

I assumed that nature would "evaluate" my work as I went along. If I was doing what nature wanted done, and if I was doing it in promising ways, permitted by nature's principles, I would find my work being econom¬ ically sustained—and vice versa, in which latter negative case I must quick¬ ly cease doing what I had been doing and seek logically alternative courses until I found the new course that nature signified her approval of by pro¬ viding for its physical support. Vherefore, I co...