Short version (marked Section S, for skipping, if you read short then long.):
Don’t get me wrong—I’ve also enjoyed a really good unexpected twist in a movie. Certainly I couldn’t have had that exact experience if I had known more about the movie. But there’s this other experience, gleeful anticipation of an upcoming twist, which you can’t have without spoilers.
Watch it again.
Would this actually work? Or, have you discovered that, far from being spoiler agnostic (i.e. the perfect Bayesian), you find that the information you have about something, going in the first time has profound effects on your experience, and you do have strong preferences about it?
Long version:
13 upvotes (karma). This seems right for this post.
For an ideal agent, information should not be harmful.
It’s not about harm. It’s about joy. (Or frustrated surprise.)
The perfect Bayesian can learn just as much regardless of what order the evidence is presented in.
New paradigm just dropped:
Learning as encountering/developing models outside your model/probability space.
Example: You come up with a theory, and cannot think of another way it could possibly be. You test it and find out it’s wrong.
Maybe so. But if you really understand something, at the S2 level (not just the S1 level), you can see whether you know how to solve a puzzle, without actually solving it. If you need to test, then at some level, you lack understanding.
Uh, what? That’s like saying ‘I have a puzzle. But if you can solve it, then you can write a program that can solve it, without you ever seeing the puzzle.’
Have you compared a series of experiences—on the grounds that, reading it the second time constitutes a ‘super spoiler’ (provided you remember it)?
What about asking people for their preference? (A similar item: If The Arrival is similar to a book (and was developed based on it in some sense), then what is the preferred read/watch order).)
Even if we set aside the puzzle thing, the author probably wrote with the un-spoiled experience in mind.
Sometimes reading a series in the right ‘wrong order’ improves things. There’s more surprises because of misconceptions. Admittedly, I had this experience with a series that already revealed information in an order that was largely, but not entirely, chronological.
Section S, in it’s version one/three form:
(1:)
Don’t get me wrong—I’ve also enjoyed a really good unexpected twist in a movie. Certainly I couldn’t have had that exact experience if I had known more about the movie. But there’s this other experience, gleeful anticipation of an upcoming twist, which you can’t have without spoilers.
Watch it again. (Whether or not this works might vary. But I do enjoy watching a good movie ‘blind’.
(3:)
And certain combinations involving unrelated movies as mentioned offhandedly later: “(If you liked Inception, then find out another movie involves dreamworlds on a train + action** in and out of dreams, you might be way more interested.)”.)
Also, if there’s something really good about a story, it’s usually worth knowing about—whether or not I will read the whole story. Since I don’t have time to read everything people mention, I’d rather people summarize it for me if it’s really interesting, so that we can talk about it right then rather than waiting until I’ve read it.
(Inception might meet this criteria.)
Ah, a Spoiler Trope Wiki! This sounds Awesome! (Although it would also be cool to integrate stuff that can serve as an assessment of ‘would you read it anyway’ and ‘do you care about spoilers’*.) Also separate from mentioning the original, it’s really interesting to see different executions of the same or similar ideas. (If you liked Inception, then find out another movie involves dreamworlds on a train + action** in and out of dreams, you might be way more interested.)
*For example, if there’s a genre that you avoid like the plague...and as you may have noticed, spoilers might serve as a reason to consume the (unusual(/unusually good)) piece of media.
**Why is it called ‘action’ instead of ‘fighting’?
Oh I totally agree that watching things again is usually boring. This makes sense for the Bayesian superintelligence too. I want to separate this from the spoilers question.
Uh, what? That’s like saying ‘I have a puzzle. But if you can solve it, then you can write a program that can solve it, without you ever seeing the puzzle.’
For example, if you know how to differentiate (in the calculus sense I mean), you can look at a differentiation problem and know whether you know how to do it vs whether there is some twist you don’t know how to deal with. Same with any type of math you know really well.
Short version (marked Section S, for skipping, if you read short then long.):
Watch it again.
Would this actually work? Or, have you discovered that, far from being spoiler agnostic (i.e. the perfect Bayesian), you find that the information you have about something, going in the first time has profound effects on your experience, and you do have strong preferences about it?
Long version:
13 upvotes (karma). This seems right for this post.
It’s not about harm. It’s about joy. (Or frustrated surprise.)
New paradigm just dropped:
Learning as encountering/developing models outside your model/probability space.
Example: You come up with a theory, and cannot think of another way it could possibly be. You test it and find out it’s wrong.
Uh, what? That’s like saying ‘I have a puzzle. But if you can solve it, then you can write a program that can solve it, without you ever seeing the puzzle.’
Have you compared a series of experiences—on the grounds that, reading it the second time constitutes a ‘super spoiler’ (provided you remember it)?
What about asking people for their preference? (A similar item: If The Arrival is similar to a book (and was developed based on it in some sense), then what is the preferred read/watch order).)
Sometimes reading a series in the right ‘wrong order’ improves things. There’s more surprises because of misconceptions. Admittedly, I had this experience with a series that already revealed information in an order that was largely, but not entirely, chronological.
Section S, in it’s version one/three form:
(1:)
Watch it again. (Whether or not this works might vary. But I do enjoy watching a good movie ‘blind’.
(3:)
And certain combinations involving unrelated movies as mentioned offhandedly later: “(If you liked Inception, then find out another movie involves dreamworlds on a train + action** in and out of dreams, you might be way more interested.)”.)
(Inception might meet this criteria.)
Ah, a Spoiler Trope Wiki! This sounds Awesome! (Although it would also be cool to integrate stuff that can serve as an assessment of ‘would you read it anyway’ and ‘do you care about spoilers’*.) Also separate from mentioning the original, it’s really interesting to see different executions of the same or similar ideas. (If you liked Inception, then find out another movie involves dreamworlds on a train + action** in and out of dreams, you might be way more interested.)
*For example, if there’s a genre that you avoid like the plague...and as you may have noticed, spoilers might serve as a reason to consume the (unusual(/unusually good)) piece of media.
**Why is it called ‘action’ instead of ‘fighting’?
Oh I totally agree that watching things again is usually boring. This makes sense for the Bayesian superintelligence too. I want to separate this from the spoilers question.
For example, if you know how to differentiate (in the calculus sense I mean), you can look at a differentiation problem and know whether you know how to do it vs whether there is some twist you don’t know how to deal with. Same with any type of math you know really well.