NYT Essay about LOST from Dec. 16

Excerpt

“And what if the rat finds a new mystery pellet every time it successfully navigates the maze, and each pellet offers a clue to where the next pellet will be found? Will the rat keep searching, collecting clues and mystery pellets until it’s exhausted and undernourished? Will this endless flow of pellets and clues about pellets inspire the rat to form a wiki site on the Web, encouraging other rats in the laboratory to list the dimensions and colors and locations of the mystery pellets that they’ve found? Will this wiki site, in turn, encourage the rats to become increasingly obsessed with these mystery pellets, despite the fact that said pellets turn out to have no nutritive or stimulative benefits whatsoever?

Now imagine that the lead researcher enters the lab one day and tells all the rats (in rat language) that there is no answer to the mystery-pellet question. All those clues were arbitrarily placed, based on the whims of each lab assistant, and they don’t mean anything. Still, the lead researcher sincerely hopes that all the rats have thoroughly enjoyed their time navigating this maze. Their loyalty and efforts are much appreciated, and they are now free to go about their lives as if none of this ever happened.

What will the rats do then?”