From: Larry (entropy@farviolet.com)
Date: Tue Oct 16 2007 - 23:50:01 MDT
On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> On 17/10/2007, Bryan Bishop <kanzure@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thoughts? I am still interested in coming up with an information
>> theoretic proof of the (lack of?) inevitability of boredom, i.e. to
>> show that there is in fact a way to always have something new to work
>> with for some definition of 'new'. (Some already claim "there is
>> nothing new under the sun.")
>
> You can't consider boredom without also considering the emotional
> aspect of it. Everyone puts a lot of effort into repeating pleasant
> experiences expecting that they will be pleasant all over again.
Interestingly there are some loopholes. The brain has two competing
mechanisms. One mechanism seeks homeostasis, drug tolerance/addiction
being a good example. The other mechanism is the ability to train
and strengthen connections through use. Meditation seems to be able
to becoming increasingly pleasant with practice since its training.
Where as winning the lottery would quickly get old, winning the lottery
repeatedly would be your new baseline level of experience.
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