Probing

Probing Principle: Learning is a cycle of probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and on this action and, on this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis; and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis.

Once I completed the tutorial in The Settlers, I was on my own.  My little settlement that I had established was busy making things, but I wanted more.  I set out to search for quests by wandering or probing.  I was stuck on my part of the land and in my settlement without the ability to move anywhere else.  I hypothesized that by accepting a quest I would be able to leave my settlement.  In the initial tutorial, the quests kept you in your own settlement, but allowed you to explore further out than where your settlers lived.  I was hoping that it would change once I finished the tutorial.  I wandered around (reprobed) trying to fulfill the challenge, but in reality the challenge was to send one of my explorers to do it for me.  I never really knew where they went.  When they returned, they informed me that they had found copper, gold, rebels needing to be killed, etc.  It was not until after they returned that I was able to see where they had gone.  Much of the time, it was just a little beyond where everyone lived, but still on our piece of land.  This often made me rethink of my original hypothesis in order to regroup and try again.  Perhaps a different quest would finally take me elsewhere...  Thus far, it has not.  I'm frustrated about that.  I was hoping to interact with other players a bit more than just chatting.