But I have some thoughts, so why not put them out there)
I dislike the idea of not being able to know what the future largely holds for me, if other people know that. It doesn’t feel like exciting expectation of pleasant surprise, it feels like not having agency. It’s ok if people plan something small and don’t tell me to surprise me, and it doesn’t have large consequences. But if it the abilities that others know I’ll have, I’d like to know it to- if it’s describable at all at my level.
There are things I wouldn’t want to know specifically. E.g., I don’t want to see a movie from the future about me marrying someone, raising kids with them, having many happy moments; I don’t want these moments to be spoiled by having already experienced some of the happiness for them. But I do pretty much want to learn from other people that marriages are a thing, being happy about a child is a thing, etc., I want to learn others experiences and feel happy for other humans having gone through something I haven’t yet. I can learn about the kinds of stuff the future could hold for me without anyone knowing the specifics before they pleasantly happen.
It’s fun to learn the specifics of my future as it unfolds; it’s not fun for it to be in the fog, and it’s not fun if other people see my future but refuse to tell me. There are ways to feel like a kid that I would enjoy; this one seems inadequate. Having fun without spoilers should be possible; having non-precise spoilers and non-deterministic future (in the sense that no one has looked at it too closely, and knowing it to the extent they looked) should also be possible and still be fun.
I go even further. I love spoilers. I’d rather read the plot of a movie on Wikipedia than see it. I’m not interested in artificial surprises, and when planning a holiday I nail down as much as I can in advance.
Life brings enough real surprises to make it superfluous to arrange fake ones.
I find an interesting contrast between the OP here and EY’s post on “unweaving the rainbow”.
ETA: I should have first looked up the OP, and found I expressed the same attitude 15 years ago. Yay temporal consistency.
Around the time you made this post, I played a computer game that had a skill tree. In the beginning, I had to pick a class; 2 out of six were unavailable until I reached lvl20 with one of my characters. I saw the tree with descriptions for the next 20 levels; every 20 levels, I had to pick a specialisation that opened up a new, somewhat independent tree. There was an item that allowed to redistribute all the points between all the trees; it was granted for free every 20 levels, plus I think I could get it from some quests or for a lot of gold. After some time, I googled the whole tree to understand what the options were and what specialisations do I want to pick to get to a character I want to play. New skills were still fun to use and see cool animations of. Being able to decide on the path I want to take with a knowledge or where approximately it could take me didn’t take away the fun. It allowed to make the fun more optimised and controllable, more in the lines of what I wanted. It was fun to play and complete quests, the story line (although I knew from the start it should probably end up in slaying an evil dragon), discover cool locations, etc.; I would understand if someone told me I shouldn’t look into something, because it would spoil the fun for me, and maybe I wouldn’t look. But in real life, the journey should be the fun, even without important specifics taking me by complete surprises. Pleasant surprises can be small. I’ve had fun discovering and proving math theorems even knowing I could look them up instead. It’s interesting to figure out how things work on a lower level even if you’re already aware of how a higher level works (e.g., I learned C at 8yo, and I looked into how professors actually work maybe at 15; it wasn’t less awesome to dig into, even having already discovered things that depend on processors)
(Wow, I’m arguing with a 15 years old post
But I have some thoughts, so why not put them out there)
I dislike the idea of not being able to know what the future largely holds for me, if other people know that. It doesn’t feel like exciting expectation of pleasant surprise, it feels like not having agency. It’s ok if people plan something small and don’t tell me to surprise me, and it doesn’t have large consequences. But if it the abilities that others know I’ll have, I’d like to know it to- if it’s describable at all at my level.
There are things I wouldn’t want to know specifically. E.g., I don’t want to see a movie from the future about me marrying someone, raising kids with them, having many happy moments; I don’t want these moments to be spoiled by having already experienced some of the happiness for them. But I do pretty much want to learn from other people that marriages are a thing, being happy about a child is a thing, etc., I want to learn others experiences and feel happy for other humans having gone through something I haven’t yet. I can learn about the kinds of stuff the future could hold for me without anyone knowing the specifics before they pleasantly happen.
It’s fun to learn the specifics of my future as it unfolds; it’s not fun for it to be in the fog, and it’s not fun if other people see my future but refuse to tell me. There are ways to feel like a kid that I would enjoy; this one seems inadequate. Having fun without spoilers should be possible; having non-precise spoilers and non-deterministic future (in the sense that no one has looked at it too closely, and knowing it to the extent they looked) should also be possible and still be fun.
I go even further. I love spoilers. I’d rather read the plot of a movie on Wikipedia than see it. I’m not interested in artificial surprises, and when planning a holiday I nail down as much as I can in advance.
Life brings enough real surprises to make it superfluous to arrange fake ones.
I find an interesting contrast between the OP here and EY’s post on “unweaving the rainbow”.
ETA: I should have first looked up the OP, and found I expressed the same attitude 15 years ago. Yay temporal consistency.
Around the time you made this post, I played a computer game that had a skill tree. In the beginning, I had to pick a class; 2 out of six were unavailable until I reached lvl20 with one of my characters. I saw the tree with descriptions for the next 20 levels; every 20 levels, I had to pick a specialisation that opened up a new, somewhat independent tree. There was an item that allowed to redistribute all the points between all the trees; it was granted for free every 20 levels, plus I think I could get it from some quests or for a lot of gold. After some time, I googled the whole tree to understand what the options were and what specialisations do I want to pick to get to a character I want to play. New skills were still fun to use and see cool animations of. Being able to decide on the path I want to take with a knowledge or where approximately it could take me didn’t take away the fun. It allowed to make the fun more optimised and controllable, more in the lines of what I wanted. It was fun to play and complete quests, the story line (although I knew from the start it should probably end up in slaying an evil dragon), discover cool locations, etc.; I would understand if someone told me I shouldn’t look into something, because it would spoil the fun for me, and maybe I wouldn’t look. But in real life, the journey should be the fun, even without important specifics taking me by complete surprises. Pleasant surprises can be small. I’ve had fun discovering and proving math theorems even knowing I could look them up instead. It’s interesting to figure out how things work on a lower level even if you’re already aware of how a higher level works (e.g., I learned C at 8yo, and I looked into how professors actually work maybe at 15; it wasn’t less awesome to dig into, even having already discovered things that depend on processors)