shrugbread- Reading02

The 10,000 bowls of oatmeal problem is particularly interesting because it is a problem that resides almost completely in the mind of the viewer, and not a truly tangible problem that the computer recognizes. The problem is essentially of relative minuteness in variation when generating something using code. You can create a generator that spits out every variation of a specific ruleset. These variations can be incredibly minute such as a single leaf on a tree being missing, or a single oat in a bowl of oatmeal having a different orientation than it’s other variants. This variation is completely true in the eyes of the computer, but has a lack of significance in the eyes of the viewer.  The problem then becomes how to make the permutations both complete and significant enough for them to be interesting.  It may not even be a problem for some types of projects, such as simulation, where every slight variance can provide a different result when some type of time changing variable is added, but is particularly unhelpful when trying to create games as sometimes the variations are too slight to have it worth implementing.  The problem then becomes how to make visual significance in every variation, such as paring down your parameters to certain key variables.