[iamerroragent]

> The underlying question remains: how do the electrons "know" what the weights are? When a new charge carrier enters the maze, how does it "know" that "turning left" will be an easier trip than "turning right"? How do most of them end up taking the express lane?

Question: when you observe water flowing on a flat surface do you see the water droplets freely separating from each other all over the surface until it's kind of evenly distributed or do you find the droplets tend to kind of follow or stick to one another?

For example, imagine you have nice trickling stream of water and that stream comes near a droplet, does the droplet join the stream or does the stream miss the droplet?

Does the new "charge" in the maze join with an existing stream or is it starting with a neutral maze and has to find the exit again?

It doesn't need to know that it needs to turn left or right, it just needs to go with the lazier option which happens to be the less resistant one.