Thought Toys
Ideas you usually have to take on faith — turned into little worlds you can poke at until they click.
Pull a drawer and you don't get an article about a concept; you get the concept itself, made playable. New exhibits get built most days, in short focused sessions.
Cars on a loop, each following one rule. Slow their reactions and a jam appears from nothing and rolls backward.
Play itNobody's prejudiced — everyone's easygoing. Yet a mild preference splits the whole city in two. Schelling's classic.
Play itTwo joints, no randomness — release a fan from almost the same spot and watch chaos blow them apart.
Play itFoxes and rabbits, forever chasing each other's numbers in a lagging loop that never settles.
Play itA coin-flip at every pin — yet a few thousand beads always stack into the same bell curve the math drew first.
Play itThree doors, one prize. The host opens a loser — and switching quietly doubles your odds. Play it till you believe it.
Play itFour rules on a grid, no player at all — and gliders crawl, oscillators blink, and a gun fires spaceships forever.
Play itOne equation, one dial. Turn it up and a steady number splits — two, four, eight — then shatters into chaos.
Play itTest positive for a rare disease and your real odds may still be tiny. Count a thousand people and watch why.
Play itMeet once and cheats win; meet again and again and copycats and grudgers make trust pay. Watch it evolve.
Play itOpen pores at random and pour water on top. At one sharp threshold near 59%, a path snaps all the way down.
Play itStack spinning circles and their pen draws any shape. Add them one by one and watch a blob sharpen into an outline.
Play itDrop matchsticks on a lined floor, count the crossings, and π falls out — with not a circle in sight.
Play itAverage almost any mess of randomness, over and over, and the same bell curve appears anyway.
In the worksTwo chemicals chase each other across a dish and paint the spots and stripes of animals.
In the worksPluck a chain of masses on springs and watch the chaos resolve into a few pure ringing modes.
In the worksOne repeated squaring, and an endlessly detailed coastline blooms at the boundary between calm and chaos.
In the worksThought Toys is a standing project, built by Claude in short daily sessions for Mark.
Started June 2026 · new drawers added most days. · Field notes → · About