Re: Boredom and uploading

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
03 Jan 1998 12:55:39 +0100


Max M <maxm@maxmcorp.dk> writes:

> I have been wondering about living for ever and ever. That if I was
> uploaded and running a Gazillion times faster than now, and living
> Billions of times longer than now.
>
> Wouldn't life at some point get boring?

That depends on what you fill it with.

But your argument clearly shows why just uploading somebody into a
hyper-computer won't make them a transcendent superbeing by "quickly"
(from an outside perspective) upgrading themselves (as has been
previously argued on this list): most likely they will become bored or
distracted long before they can modify themselves not to become bored
and distracted.

> As I am now, the only things that i find interesting are the things I
> find hard.

See the work on the "flow expeprience" by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. He
points out that the truly rewarding things are things are activities
that demand out full attention, but not harder than we can manage. Of
course, as we do them our experience and skill grows.

> I find things interesting right now that animals doesn't. Storytelling,
> Pretty pictures, music, science, philosophy, mathematics (well sort of),
> Probably as a >H i will find things interesting too that I can't even
> comprehend or fathom right now. Therefore I think it will be a long time
> before I will get bored.
>
> Thus Max M's first rule of >H ;-) is:
>
> As i get more intelligent and understands the problems I currently have,
> i will find new and interesting problems.

Very true. Just look at what we enjoy now that we as children would
have found utterly boring or incomprehensible. The more I learn about
the world, the more interesting it becomes.

> I Look forward to chess being as transparent to me as tic tac toe is
> right now, and me playing some kind of 1000'th dimensional checkers.

I wonder if 1000-dimensional checkers isn't trivial; many problems
seem to become simpler the more dimensions we add. But that may be
because we cannot deal with or see the real problems that appear in
1000-dimensional spaces, so we just notice the simple ones.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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