Today’s post, In Praise of Boredom was originally published on 18 January 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
“Boredom” is an immensely subtle and important aspect of human values, nowhere near as straightforward as it sounds to a human. We don’t want to get bored with breathing or with thinking. We do want to get bored with playing the same level of the same video game over and over. We don’t want changing the shade of the pixels in the game to make it stop counting as “the same game”. We want a steady stream of novelty, rather than spending most of our time playing the best video game level so far discovered (over and over) and occasionally trying out a different video game level as a new candidate for “best”. These considerations would not arise in most utility functions in expected utility maximizers.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Getting Nearer, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
[SEQ RERUN] In Praise of Boredom
Today’s post, In Praise of Boredom was originally published on 18 January 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Getting Nearer, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.