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I understand what you are seeing and can see your point. I think it brings up another point though. Does interesting have intrinsic value? I believe the 20th
by 300bps 5y ago
I understand what you are seeing and can see your point.
I think it brings up another point though. Does interesting have intrinsic value?
I believe the 20th century was a time period where the western world had to learn to live in a world with infinite sugar, fat and salt. Our nature is to gorge on these naturally rare resources when we find them.
I believe the 21st century will force humans to live in a world of infinite information. Again, our nature is to gorge ourselves on things we find interesting. Is watching YouTube videos you’re interested in any better than eating sugar? Time will tell but my initial reaction is that it is just as unhealthy.
For example, I love history. YouTube will happily feed me an infinite array of little factoids about history. I’ve seen so many that I will then see the same one come up on my feed again and think, “ooh that sounds interesting” and then I remember watching it previously and can’t remember a single thing about it. Was it really that interesting then? Or was I just wasting time mindlessly binge watching videos?
- TeMPOraL 5y agoNah, I don't think "interesting" has intrinsic value. The kind of "interesting" / "surprising" quality that I claim smartphones deliver better than anything in natural world, is a kind of cognitive equivalent to sugar. For the most of the history of our species, sugar was a good proxy for "nutritious", and in the same way, sensory input being interesting/surprising was a good proxy for "important for survival". Today, both sugar and interesting experiences are superstimuli - they tend to be found in most abundance in things of little value.