Isn't that like saying, "I used to marvel at nature, that it has elements such as fire, water, ice, and amazing living things. Then I discovered it is all made

Isn't that like saying, "I used to marvel at nature, that it has elements such as fire, water, ice, and amazing living things. Then I discovered it is all made of atoms interacting... I am now less motivated." ? I mean, the fire, the water, the ice, the amazeness of life and intelligence are still there. You just gained a new foundational view. Now you can understand and manipulate better what you already knew, maybe now you learned about plasma, or even extremely advanced and mysterious phenomena like bose-einstein condensates or superfluidity. The old wonders are still there, you've gained new ones. I'm not going to claim complete cognitive equivalence (or even preference) between the two states of mind, but it is a bit like childhood: firmly believing in Santa Claus, or Wizards or whatever can be exciting, perhaps more exciting than knowing they are myths; but growing up and understanding they are mythical brings new opportunities, capabilities, and even new mysteries you could not reach before (buying and building whatever you want, vast amounts of knowledge, understanding more about technology and society, etc.). It's the adults that keep us alive and well, that make decisions for us and for society at large. So perhaps (although I'm not entirely convinced by the cumulative argument) truth is a sacrifice, but it is one well worth bearing, at least for me. I am deeply interested in how intelligence works, in how "the sausage is made" (at least for certain highly useful sausages that compose the fundamentals of the world). Even more, understanding is above all a responsibility, if not for all of us, at least for some of us, or hopefully in one way or another for most of us. I can't recommend enough Feynman on Beauty: (this argument is largely inspired by that) https://fs.blog/2011/10/richard-feynman-on-beauty/ https://fs.blog/2011/10/richard-feynman-on-beauty/ In the same vein, intelligence to me used to be a black box where you got input from the world, some kind of wondrous magic happened, and then you got talking kids, scientists, artists, and so on. Now I still view it as wondrous, but now I understand the fundamental is apparently a network-like structure with functional relationships that change, adapt to previously seen information in other to explain it, that there are a number of interesting phenomena and internal structures (going well beyond the simple idea of 'parameter tuning') that can be formalized -- essentially the architecture of the brain (or better, 'a brain'). To give an example, there have been formalizations of Curiosity, i.e. Artificial Curiosity, and I consider it essential for an agent interacting independently in the world or in a learning environment (part of the larger problem of motivation). How amazing is it to formalize and understand something so profound and fundamental to our being as Curiosity? I felt the same way about Information theory years ago. How amazing is it that we've built robots (in virtual environments), and it works -- they're curious and learn the environment without external stimulus? Above considerations aside, I find that amazing, beautiful, awesome.