Maxi's Toolkit Vol.8 - Quantum Caramel

Or "Why That Which Can't Be Tasted, Tastes Best"

Please refrain from licking your screen.

Welcome to another instalment in Maxi’s Toolkit. In the toolkit I outline a number of epistemological techniques — or ‘epitechs’, tools for thinking — that will be of some interest to the discerning digital humanist in navigating a world of ever-increasing complexity.

In a better-, though more homogeneously, educated world where there are more means to the expression of intelligence than every before (wahoo!), the number of ways and instances in which intelligence can be misused is increasing in direct proportion (boo!). From the bottom to the top of the intellectual totem pole, opportunities for mistaken, indisciplined thinking are rife — and perhaps the most damaging and dangerous attribute of inexact, corrupted, or misinformed thought is that it often goes unnoticed. Such erroneous thought can often be bizarrely convincing, even seductive.

The toolkit is an effort to put more equipment at our disposal for identifying errors in thought — our own and others’ — and correcting them. Each piece devoted to a tool will usually be brief (unless the tool itself is highly complex), containing a definition, notes on application, and a short analysis.

You can find Vol.7 — on Vainferreting, and how we will completely betray our own most cherished beliefs to be thought well of by others — here. Today’s volume concerns the notion of quantum caramel.

Put down that birthday cake which you’d so longed for, and which ultimately turned out to be dry, powdery, and not particularly sweet, and get a load of this.

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Quantum Caramel

Def. — A phenomenon whereby something becomes more pleasurable the less it is actually possessed; may also commute to a counter-phenomenon whereby something becomes less pleasurable the more it is possessed.