===Hi.===

What follows is a presentation of my CHESS project.I don't mind which parts you choose to read, if any, nor which parts you choose to respond to, if any.

All referenced files @http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/djn--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

=====GOAL:=====

It's called compendenium [sic].Although my goal is much too abstract to articulate, the concrete target I'm going for is the SAT.

The SAT is famous (in the U.S.), small (just a few subject areas and question types), & unbeaten, sinceIndividuals have succeeded in doing well, but no test preparation company or program has succeeded in making OTHERS do well on a global (country-wide) scale.

What I want compendenium to do is create some sort of statistical anomaly in SAT scores that's large enough to be noticed by the media or something & widely talked about.

Even though SAT scores are normalized, & even though if many people do well on the subjective section the graders will automatically start grading harder in the middle of things, & even though sometimes people just don't want to do well,I still think there are plenty of ways to crack the test wide open.

For example, if an unusually high number of people get perfect raw scores then the normalization will be unable to hide the abnormally high number of 800s. I don't really care what the anomaly is, nor do I really think I could predict it. I just want it to happen, & to be much too blatant for "the nation," whatever that means, to ignore it.

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=======PACKAGE=======

Students have great capacity for emotion, & I intend to invoke from them & exploit the full range.

The fundamental encounter is for a student to happen upon a package, modeled after an internal mailing envelope, those things a little bigger than an 8.5x11 sheet of paper with a flap closed by a brad or string, accidentally lying on the floor somewhere.

Of course if the student is distracted or has a good life with no need for strange things they will ignore it, or if they are malevolent they might destroy it without examining it, but such is the way of students.

I suspect, however, that a sufficient number of students will succumb to the emotion of curiosity & examine it more closely.They will find some rhetoric touting the concept of involvement, examples given in package_front.jpg & package_back.jpg.

Involvement is the core concept on which compendenium is based.It's like... whenever someone's idea enters your bubble it is shredded irrecoverably, & whenever your own idea leaves it is influenced imperceptiblyIt's like... you can't solve problems by solving their parts separately, or even by solving just the problem, because each part affects the others, & each problem is affected by others

Of course this is all ambiguous right now, it doesn't make sense, isn't practical, | in other words & as the student will surely be feeling, it's bullshit.

However, ambiguity doesn't mean it's wrong, it means it's new, or so I hope, & bullshit is where plants grow from seeds.I don't need the student to believe in nor understand nor care about anything the package says. All I need them to do is turn it over to the back & open it.

Of course, if all the package was was a bunch of hollow rhetoric, the student might not do it.But recall that involvement says one thing can be affected by what's around it.In this case, the package will be rather full & bulky, with not only a significant amount of paper but also a CD case (one of the hard, thicker ones).That feeling which bleeds through the envelope into the student's fingers & pulls down on their arms should support my no-longer-so-empty words with a sufficient boost to make opening the package irrestible.

If that should happen, the first battle is won. & the game continues.

If not, it's a blow, but not a fatal one. So long as just a few people open the package, there's a chance to win in the events that follow.

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=====STORY=====

Learning has to have meaning.

Thus the first thing the student will see coming out of compendenium is a story to provide said significance.

The story consists of several sheets of 8.5x11 paper bound together in a loop by a single string through a single hole punched in the vertical middle of a side margin.

There is nothing to distinguish a certain beginning or end; the story just goes in a big cycle.

story.jpg shows two pages of the story which act as the initial beginning & end. the involve page will be at the top of the wad of stuff that comes out of the compendenium, & the futility page will be wrapped around at the bottom, with the rest of the pages in-between

You see that the involve page goes over the same concept as before, but this time in the "world" of CHESS, with the knight as protagonist and the board as the universe.In this specific example, "looking up" to the sky represents paying attention to something that theoretically doesn't affect the "down-to-earth" reality, or in other words involvement.

The story is character-centric. It's title will be "faery pieces" [sic] & it will borrow & create many characters from the idea of fairy pieces in CHESS, made-up pieces with special moves & properties.

Although the story does not specifically teach anything, it is the "entrance" to the parts that do.What I mean by that is that you can't just memorize random information on the fly, you need to be in this certain mindset where it seems important & salient to you so you can process it.The story pages are designed to re-paint the various concepts, like involvement, in just the right way to act as an "en-trance-ment," to impinge upon the reader's sensitivity just enough so that they want to learn.If the story succeeds, then the reader's natural defenses against irrelevant information will have been breached, & they will be much more vulnerable to core content that they are about to stumble upon.If not, skip ahead to DISK for my contingency.

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=====CARDS=====

Interleaved among the pages of the story will be yet more sheets of 8.5x11 paper. These "cards" are modeled after a deck in that each "card" is self-sufficient, with meaning of its own, but also that it works with the other cards.What I'm trying to say is that I will never teach a concept/lesson that is less than or greater than a single page in length, except by accident.Just like the CHESSboard is made only of squares 1x1 in dimension, except by accident these smaller squares form bigger ones upto the whole board of 8x8.Furthermore the lessons are not bound by any set order. Although they have an order, they are meant to be shuffled & gain significance no matter what order they are in.

I believe this organizational pattern is the best for what I seek to teach. Furthermore, each card will be as "boring" in style as possible. It will be pure black&white, and all typed in a single-sized monotype font.Recall that I do not fear the reader's emotions? CHESS, at its core, is a boring game. The SAT, too, is quite boring. And any learning, when sanitized, suffers the same problem. I make no attempt to hide this with the cards. They mirror the boredom of the things they teach. Because the reader must be able to face said boredom, & to make something wonderful of it. Just because my cards are "constrained" by a certain style, does not mean I have not made that style get up & sing for me.Examples shown in challenge.jpg, elemental.jpg, & confidence.jpg

Please don't bother examining the examples too closely.They are old, from when I was first learning.I hope that they look interesting & dynamic when viewed from afar, but I had not learned how to properly write their internal content at the time, so they are pretty worthless to read carefully.What they are intended to show is that I can make the content look interesting when the reader is just browsing.Since then, I have learned how to make the content interesting in depth as well, which I summarize here.

All the cards are about the knight, exclusively.Each card has a suit based on how many moves of the knight it focuses on, from zero to six.That makes seven suits, plus there is one "relative" suit that acts as wildcards, for eight suits total.They are as follows:

Relative suit: (no name)

Relates the cards to their purpose in the compendenium, & how to use them.Example rhetoric:" With no pieces, what is a board? It does not exist, nor is it known. But pieces project their natures, which grow about the archetypes of the board, revealing it to us."

0-move suit: Flatness

Notes how at first everything is "flat" & "empty," like a blank piece of paper.Emphasizes that no matter how pointless you think something is, it matters // fills the board because, as it is flat, everything is squashed together.Example rhetoric:" On the board all things mingle, relevent or not." [sic]

1-move suit: Weather Axiom

To be able to move is an ability, to be able to _do_ something instead of merely observe, is the first step of accomplishing anything. So you have to do *something*!Example rhetoric:" Abilities come & go. Like the weather. Like the stars. Axiomatic postulates. People have tried to control them... can you make it rain? They are the swirling tempi around the board that give it meaning. Don't worry so much about it all the time, just do them. To just use your abilities matters more than the consequences. Or the lack of consequences, if they seem totally unrelated to you. Unless of course you're willing to risk saving them, but isn't that just another ability?"

2-move suit: A Common Sense of Direction

Once you're doing something, you can begin to learn about it & how it works.The knight, in two moves, makes some obvious senses like "horizontal" moves, "diagonal" moves, & several others which I draw & play with here.Although with just the knight alone these aren't overwhelmingly remarkable, these cards will be at the appropriate point in the story so that they are a shared or "common sense" with one of the faery pieces.For example, the "diagonal" card will be where the knight encounters the bishop in the story.

3-move suit: The Quest for The Legendary MASTER CUBE

The 3-move patterns are just complex enough to be intimidating but just simple enough to be understood.The most powerful one I've found looks like a cube & can be rotated & symmetrized in a lot of ways to make different patterns.These cards portray the quest for this so called MASTER CUBE, teaching things like howThe MASTER CUBE is made up of all the senses so you can't skimp out on your least favorite,& how in Reality the simpler or degenerate patterns are powerful in their own right, & being a MASTER is about knowing them all not just the big one.

4-move suit: Intuitive Enigmas

4-moves are too complicated to fully keep in your head at one time, but you can still attack them with intuition and other more mature techniques.These cards look at "meditating" upon or "practicing" with & "exercising" with these large patterns to relax and become stronger.The culminating "enigma" is an interesting situation where, no matter which of the eight moves a knight can make, they all take it closer to a square 2x2 away... even though half the moves would seem to be taking it further away.

5-move suit: Counterspell!

If 4-moves are complicated, 5-moves are overwhelming.These cards use the idea of "limits" to cut the 5-moves down to size. For example, the borders of an 8x8 board cuts off many of the 5-move paths, & certain squares can be deliberately ignored & jumped over to make the 5-move patterns smaller & conquerable.

6-move suit: Fullness

There is only one target that takes six moves:From one corner of the 8x8 board to the opposite.These cards portray that journey as a sort of test.Can, from all your travels, you now gaze across the entire board & see not flatness, but the fullness of everything you've learned in a sort of "infinite zoom" that takes in the smallest detail to the biggest picture?

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==================Interlude: mastery==================

Of course, it is nothing in the compendenium that mattersBut the student themself that must be an independent individual, consciously a master.For that reason the entire compendenium will be dripping with, as I'm sure you've seen hints of already, "you" rhetoric.Here are some more explicit examples:" (of the cards) These tomes are nothing compared to what else is written out there, which is nothing compared to what _you_ know. Don't bother reading them, their length is just a representation for the immensity of _your_ powers." If you don't see the boards in the different senses, use the boards in the different senses, then you've already lost! There is no board, just the natures dripping around it. If you become trapped in definitions, like mathematics has, then you become trapped in a fundamental misconception. You must THINK, project the different natures you know across it, rotate it & symmetric it & convert it in your head. To always see 7, 7, 7, 7 blinds you to 7, seven, *******, *** * *** Oh sure, they {claim} you should think that way. But without doing it themselves, why should you listen to them @ all? I'll do it for you. I'll do it, I'll prove I know it, have been forced to live it... if only to do it, for you. But remember, my doing it is worthless, except to prove I can... to you!"

The paradox is that you have to "force" someone to make a "choice".That you have to do the challenge yourself to prove it to them, but that you must leave it undone so that they are the one that grows.

I will strive to show everything I know in this one field, CHESS. That is the "force," & the "proof" to them.But I nonetheless have not solved all of it, much less the SAT. That is the "choice," & the "potential" for them.

P.S. On the inside of the package I will have calligraphied some so-called "fundamental theorems" of CHESS which I shall reference occasionally in the other material & the student will eventually stumble upon. The core of being a master is success, so I cannot deny presenting my best results to the student or the entire compendenium simply won't work. I will of course, however, plead all the while that my "fundamental theorems" are nothing compared to what they can come up with.

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===========ANNOTATIONS===========

I spoke of the cards that held the core content, but I did not speak of the back of those cards.Surely you didn't think I would waste that space?

On the back of every card is the front of an alternate card.For example, on the back of the "horizontal" card might be a duplicate of the front of the "diagonal" card.However, the back will have as an overlay a bunch of scrawled annotations. Written by hand & in color, they will be a stark contrast to the typed & black content of the cards.& like a teacher grading, they will tear the cards apart.

The annotations serve two main purposes: The first is to clarify some of the content with real-world examples, since the cards themselves are knight-exclusive.Example: lines prefixed by ** are annotations" Chapter * --------- the board** its rules

With no pieces, what is a board?** the universe, ether It does not exist, nor is it known.

But pieces project their natures, which grow about the archetypes of the board, revealing it to us.** atoms aren't the universe, they're pieces that reveal part of it to us" The second purpose is to challenge that content & break it, make it wrong.Example:"** Do U ^read$ the world around you? You must be competent with the board.** To "understand green"? lol"

Please recall the annotations will be hand-written & in color & margins, so they will not appear as boring & in-line with text as they do here.

The annotations are supposed to get the reader in the habit of challenging what they read & being better than it, as well as not falling apart & thinking "it doesn't make sense, I don't get it."It's like including answers to every problem.However, because the answers to one problem are on the back of some random card, the reader will be unlikely to look up the answers to everything before doing it.On the other hand, because every problem has some answers on the back of it, the reader should get the full benefit of realizing that they can do better than merely "reading" what I've written. That's what the contrast between card & annotation is designed to make obvious.It is my sincere hope the reader will be induced to make their own annotations on the cards noting just how horribly wrong they are. For the more wrong the cards are, the more right & the more of a master the student can be.

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====DISK====

Despite (because of??) all this effort, it is inevitable that the student will tire of what I have done.If I am lucky, they might have spent fifteen or even as many as twenty seconds looking at everything I have just described.But more realistically we are talking fifteen to twenty milliseconds.Nonetheless, I am prepared for this.

You will recall that in addition to all that paper, compendenium contained a CD?Even after having judged the entire sum of the writing & drawing & effort in the compendenium pointless in a split-second of consideration, I still believe the student will feel a draw to see just what the CD is.The CD is of course smack dab in the middle of all the story & cards, so that the bastard will at least incidentally be exposed to my effort that they're trying to ignore as they flip through to get the CD out.

Although I doubt the student will run the CD, I also doubt they'll be able to resist looking at the front.There they will find my "exit" strategy; that is, the strategy to make what I've done "exist" beyond itself & to escape its package to influence the world around it.Example given in disk.jpg

You see that I am begging the reader to do a little review, to remember something they saw with a fresh perspective so that maybe this time it means something.The title of the disk is "tempic spells," implying time & magic.

Magic is when something changes that can't change.But how does that happen? Time.Magic is when you forget all about something, like a certain person or piece of music or idea or place, & then later they suddenly return.To you, only a second has passed, because all the time in-between doesn't count because you had forgotten about the person or thing.But during the time you had forgotten, you or that thing was changing, so that, magically, they are different even though to you no time has passed.Magic is when something you had forgotten returns, but it's different, even though that's impossible.

What the disk does is complete the arc of the reader's feeling, to admit defeat & say, okay, maybe I'm no good. But in doing so it sets up an anchor, a tiny memory-trap. & if at some point in the future something the reader's doing should have enough resonance & relation to anything the student saw in the compendenium, then they will remember.& magically, what was at the time pointless & weak, will be strong.

Rome wasn't built in a day... so the disk is what makes sure tomorrow comes.

The rhetoric on the disk is most important, but in case you're wondering: should you place the disk in a computer it will contain some supplementary info, like the sources for the ideas of some the faery pieces, & the files & instructions for making a "copy" of the compendenium, like the things to print out to make the cards.

The compendenium is far too effort-intensive to mass produce, but this way if it's good the student can make a copy for someone else on their own.& by copy, of course, I mean they would change the story or the cards or annotations or anything really to make it better.

The disk is the means by which the initial tiny effects of the compendenium can be magnified into a force to be reckoned with.

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========STICKIES========

Now I know what you're thinking.You're thinking, well, you might have tricked the student into reading your stuff once, but that was because you cheated with this huge mysterious envelope charade.But that's a trick, a non-renewable resource, without the sustainability that true focus & studying & concentration demand to really pose a threat to the SAT.

This is why I will have a bunch of sticky notes plastered randomly throughout compendenium.They represent the elemental things like desire that we just can't seem to get rid of, that stick to us or that we want to stick to, that provide that focus & concentration you speak of.

Some of the stickies will be parasitic on existing elements, such as breathing & the feeling when you stop, or the old fallbacks food & sex & water, and the never explained just how exactly do you "move" your arm?

But the rest will be about making new elements, because that is what a student must do.In lieu of explaining, let me just present an example:" What is elemental & essential cannot be solved, of course. It is where you retreat when you have nothing, desperate to come up with something that by definition you cannot do anything to speed along. But of course, _you_ can, if only you could figure it out. Suppose I were to give you a CHESS piece, the knight. I could tell you to look @ it, & that you're missing something. Right now, it is of course possible for you to figure out what you're missing, isn't it? It's just that it's so .basic. a thing you must realize, that there is no algorithm or technique to do it. Quite the opposite, in fact That is its nature. I tell you to look @ the bottom, & you see that the piece is hollow & that a folded slip of paper has been placed inside. You pull out the paper & unfold it. Scrawled across is the word poison, & you begin to feel dizzy & collapse on the ground. Could you have known? Most people couldn't. No matter how intelligent, how experienced, how much of a prodigy any person or any thing was, there was no way they could have known. & yet, somehow, you could have. & you will. So. Do you die? Do you want to go on?"

I really can't explain.This is the rest of the rhetoric I have for the stickies, all split up all over of course:" When you are locked in a room with nothing to do, when you're trapped & there's nothing you can do, that is the fee that you must pay to ad vance!

When you are broke & no one likes you & you like no one, then you have to find something among no thing in existance among you.

That is, some sort of money, currency in the moment that you can take b4 they take you it from

perchance horrible mayhaps beautiful

who knows only you?

they call it creativity but a creative person couldn't do it it's before, not after

like destiny but if you were destined to you couldn't

this isn't new... this is what makes it s l o w enough, s t i l l enough to function when the whole world is so fast, how can you? motion isn't relative, is it?

to be good before knowing it impossible to force the girl to make a certain choice impossible to predict what is random impossible because beforeeeeeeee not after {mistake} to be doing the right thing before you try or know to be natural to never have done any thing essential

a fraction of a second | all eternity the initiative does not have to happen but something must be wrong no one can find it but you can

to throw yourself at something doomed for the sake of how it changes what comes after; because you are doing it before! you know."

The stickies try to capture the student's motivations, & to create new ones, For that is the sustenance that lets them keep going.

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====TEST====

& that's just about everything in the compendenium.Of course, I have failed so far to mention anything about my target, the SAT, in the compendenium itself.Ideally speaking, somehow the compendenium should magically by osmosis or something teach the students to do well on the SAT, with "reasoning skills" or some such trash.But that's a losing bet, so I'm going to cheat a little.

Sprinkled throughout, just like the stickies, will be cut-out pieces of the SAT glued on to the various parts of the compendenium.

Students _need_ grades, tests, examinations to learn.They are absurd; they make idiot things like Do you know the capital of Bosnia?, things that could be found out trivially in a normal situation, suddenly take on life-shattering importance.But that's how life works. A tiny, inconsequential thing can mean the difference between driving safely or straight into another car.Students _need_ that possibility of proving themselves, where everything they have ever done suddenly becomes important & significant & the nerves & adrenaline sweep over them.

These bits of the SAT will be my test to them.I'll inscribe in them my challenge to the students in some sort of scary-looking hard-to-read "runescript" or such to make it seem different.Because that's what tests are - different.

Scattered throughout, I hope these test fragments can collect whatever epiphanies the students have while going through the compendenium enough to let them ace the SAT. That is, after all, the goal, without which the whole ordeal is a lost cause.

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====Bye.====

I'm sorry that compendenium is just a big dream with no implementation.Only a master can write compendenium, & though I have tried I am not, i am not, i am not.

I'm sure you have found that everything about the compendenium actually turns up already in all the existing theories a hundred times already.From the way textbooks are designed with the problem sections, historical sections, etc. to like every self-help book in existence, I have found that no matter what I come up with people already try it with seemingly little effect.

I don't know why the SAT hasn't been solved yet, but I do know that to find out I have to try these things, even if they have already tried & failed.

From message.txt