This Is Your Brain on Kafka

In other news, scientists discover the human brain's learning algorithm performs better on new problem instances when measures are taken to prevent over fitting on the initial learning examples.

That aside, I feel like any act which exposes your mind to ideas and experiences which are wholly new would have the same effect, eg I would be genuinely surprised if there wasn't a similar effect after someone read the Sandman comics that Neil Gaiman authored for the first time.

Now we need only wait until some enterprising person releases 'Baby Kafka' for expectant mothers.

My wife is a big The Mighty Boosh fan and reads a lot of Lewis Carroll, and the other night, doing a crossword, asked: "Is there a word spelled.. i-n-t-o? In-toe?"

Simply put, absurdity exercises your brain when you seek meaning in such. Such exercise increases your ability to find meaning and patterns.

Given that our brains are hard-wired to find patterns, I'll bet this also makes us more likely to "find" them where none exist.

See: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/its_one_of_the_more.p...

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826628

Can anyone suggest some good absurdist literature then?