Quote of the Day

There is a not uncommon phenomenon—sometimes called mystical experience—from which a person emerges with the conviction that some unsolvable problem (like the purpose of existence) has been completely explained; one can’t remember quite how, only that it was answered so well as to leave no doubt at all. This, I venture, reflects some mental mechanism (perhaps one of last resort) that, in a state of particularly severe turmoil or distress, can short-circuit the entire intellectual process—by creating the illusion that the problem has been settled.

—Marvin Minsky, “Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious”