The right kind of fun?
If you consider that the utility generated by working is much greater than the utility directly generated by having fun, then the main thing that you’re going to optimizing when you have fun is how much motivation the memory of having that fun increases your working capabilities. This is distinctly different from optimizing for the direct preference fulfillment generated by the fun, even if the same activities are optimal for both utility functions.
The same model works for any action A such that the utility generated by the effect of that action on another action is much greater than the utility generated by the action itself. This probably applies to most maintainance actions, such as doing laundry, sleeping, eating, but this is more obvious to us—we usually don’t see laundry as an end unto itself, but we often do pursue fun for it’s own sake. I’m not advocating that we shouldn’t have fun, but that we (or at least I) seem to be optimizing for the wrong thing—direct preference fulfillment, rather than motivation.
This feels like a significant insight, but I tend to get a significant number of false positives. Any ideas on how we might use this?
This is an important distinction, but you have it backwards. We (or at least I) value work for its useful consequences, and fun for its own sake.
The utility generated by working is higher than that generated by many kinds of immediate fun not because we value work over fun, but because the work will, in the long term, produce more fun or other things we value (e.g, benefits to others).
I agree with this. Did I miscommunicate?
I suspect there was a miscommunication. I thought that by:
you meant that the purpose of, say, going to a movie would be to make us more motivated to work later. Whereas, when I go to a movie, I’m doing because I expect to enjoy the experience for itself.
The fact is that any given action can be pleasant on its own, or produce something we value, or both at the same time. It’s important to know which kind of benefit to expect from a given action, or we’ll be disappointed, but both kinds are good.
I’ll try to clarify:
I would call “Enjoying the experience for itself” the terminal utility assigned by your utility function to you going to the movie—for most of us, fun is one of our terminal values, so a world-state in which we are having a certain intensity of fun for a certain length of time has higher utility than one in which we are having no fun, all else being equal.
The motivation-to-work that results from having fun is a source of instrumental utility because it increases the instrumental utility output of our future work (which is an attempt to optimize for future world-states in which we are having fun in the broad sense—world states with greater terminal utility.)
Now, let’s assume for a moment that the instrumental utility generated by you working for a length of time is much, much greater (ex: you’re saving the world, or a significant part of it), than the terminal utility generated by you having fun for that same length of time. If we also assume that the effect of motivation upon the instrumental utility of your work output is somehow affected by the amount of instrumental utility that each unit of your work output has, then the terminal utility granted directly by you having fun approaches zero in comparison to the instrumental utility granted by the increase in your work output as a result of motivation-caused-by-having-fun.
Of course, this conclusion is subject to the assumptions that I made earlier. If the instrumental utility generated by the work that you do doesn’t dwarf the terminal utility generated by the fun that you have, then it doesn’t apply.
Okay, that makes sense. We agree. I just didn’t understand your assumptions the first time.
Yes this, when it comes to core motivations. But it’s worth noting that you probably CAN find work that provides more fun on its own that much of the “pure” fun available (“fun” in the form of personal fulfillment.)
That doesn’t mean work ALWAYS results in fun for its own sake and you shouldn’t arrange your goals based on that assumption. But if you can hack yourself to enjoy things that produce valuable output, you’re in good shape.
Definitely.
The role of fun in maintaining mental health should also be noted. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
There are game design gurus like Raph Koster and Jonathan Blow who would point out the connection between fun and learning.
I don’t know if playing Dungeons and Dragons (which was, from my perspective, mostly carefully reading books filled with charts and rules in anticipation of play, rather than playing) taught me to be able to study API documentation; but it might have. Playing with Hypercard and Cosmic Osmo and Myst might have taught me something about the simplicity of the secret text behind the world. Maybe people who play a lot of SpaceChem will do better in multithreaded programming. Maybe people who play a lot of FoldIt will do better in nanotech design.
What I’m trying to say is the premise of “fun is what we do to recover from work” might not be the best place to start thinking about this.