Are you sure this isn’t the Eliezer concept of boring, instead of the human concept? There seem to be quite a few humans who are happy to keep winning using the same approach day after day year after year. They keep getting paid well, getting social status, money, sex, etc. To the extent they want novelty it is because such novelty is a sign of social status—a new car every year, a new girl every month, a promotion every two years, etc. It is not because they expect or want to learn something from it.
An easy way to differentiate the two kinds for those who like games is:
People who can play Mario Kart thousands of times and have a lot of fun.
People who must play the new final fantasy.
There are those who do both, and those who only enjoy games designed for doing the same thing, better and better, every five minutes.
Compare the complexity of handball with the complexity of bowling.
Maybe bowling is Eliezer::boring but it isn’t boring for a lot of people.
It would be a waste of energetic resources if FAI gave those people Final Fantasy 777 instead of just letting them play Mario Kart 9.
The tough question then becomes: Are those of us who enjoy Mario Kart and bowling willing to concede the kind of fun that the Eliezer Final Fantasy, pro-increasing-rate-of-complexity find desirable? They will be consuming soooo much energy for their fun.
Isn’t it fair that we share the pie half in half, and they consume theirs exponencially, while we enjoy for subjectively longer?
The argument that you would loose interest if you could explain boredom away—which is what I have to conclude from your stance:
All novelty will be used up, all existence will become boring, the remaining differences no more important than shades of pixels in a video game.
seems a bit thin to me. Does a magician loose interest because he knows every single trick that wows the audience?
Does the musician who has spent a lifetime studying the intricacies of Bach’s partita No 2 loose interest just because he can deconstruct it entirely?
Douglas Hoefstadter expressed a similar concern a decade or so ago when he learnt of some “computer program” able to “generate Mozart music better then Mozart himself” only to recant a bit later when facing the truism that there is more to the entity than the some of its parts.
I do not know that we will someday be able to “explain magic away”, and if that makes me irrational (and no, I don’t need to bring any kind of god in the picture: I’m perfectly happy being goddless and irrational :) so be it.
Are you sure this isn’t the Eliezer concept of boring, instead of the human concept? There seem to be quite a few humans who are happy to keep winning using the same approach day after day year after year. They keep getting paid well, getting social status, money, sex, etc. To the extent they want novelty it is because such novelty is a sign of social status—a new car every year, a new girl every month, a promotion every two years, etc. It is not because they expect or want to learn something from it.
An easy way to differentiate the two kinds for those who like games is: People who can play Mario Kart thousands of times and have a lot of fun. People who must play the new final fantasy.
There are those who do both, and those who only enjoy games designed for doing the same thing, better and better, every five minutes.
Compare the complexity of handball with the complexity of bowling.
Maybe bowling is Eliezer::boring but it isn’t boring for a lot of people.
It would be a waste of energetic resources if FAI gave those people Final Fantasy 777 instead of just letting them play Mario Kart 9.
The tough question then becomes: Are those of us who enjoy Mario Kart and bowling willing to concede the kind of fun that the Eliezer Final Fantasy, pro-increasing-rate-of-complexity find desirable? They will be consuming soooo much energy for their fun.
Isn’t it fair that we share the pie half in half, and they consume theirs exponencially, while we enjoy for subjectively longer?
Maybe for some people more shallow forms of novelty suffice e.g. sex with new women.
The argument that you would loose interest if you could explain boredom away—which is what I have to conclude from your stance:
seems a bit thin to me. Does a magician loose interest because he knows every single trick that wows the audience?
Does the musician who has spent a lifetime studying the intricacies of Bach’s partita No 2 loose interest just because he can deconstruct it entirely?
Douglas Hoefstadter expressed a similar concern a decade or so ago when he learnt of some “computer program” able to “generate Mozart music better then Mozart himself” only to recant a bit later when facing the truism that there is more to the entity than the some of its parts.
I do not know that we will someday be able to “explain magic away”, and if that makes me irrational (and no, I don’t need to bring any kind of god in the picture: I’m perfectly happy being goddless and irrational :) so be it.