The ideal human life may be close to what you have, but the vast majority of humanity is and has been living in ways they’d really prefer not to. And I’d prefer not to get old and suffer and die before I want to. We will need new challenges if we create utopia, but the point of fun theory is that it’s fairly easy to create fun challenges.
I also prefer things to be different, but this is how it’s supposed to be. If we play a game against eachother, I will actually prefer it if you try to prevent my victory rather than let me win. Doesn’t this reveal that we prefer the game itself over the victory? But it’s the same with life.
Of course, I’d like it if my boss said “You don’t have to work any more, and we’re going to pay you 1000$ a day anyway”. But this is only because it will allow me to play better games than the rat race. Whatever I do as an alternative, I will need something to fight against me in order to enjoy life.
I’m willing to bet that suicide is more common today than it was in the stone age, despite the common belief that life is much better now. I don’t think they required nearly as much encouragement to survive as we do. I think we have an attitude problem today.
By the way, if you were both human and god at the same time, would you be able to prevent yourself from cheating? Given utopia-creating AI, would you actually struggle with these challenges and see a value in them? You could cheat at any time, and so could anyone competing with you. You will also have to live with the belief that it’s just a game you made up and therefore not “real”.
Ever played a good game without challenges and problems to solve? Ever read a good fiction without adversity and villains? But our lives are stories and games. And when the problem is solved, the book and the game is over, there’s nothing worth writing about anymore. Victory is dangerous. The worst which can happen to a society is that somebody wins the game, i.e. gets absolute power over everyone else. The game “monopoly” shows how the game kind of ends there. Dictatorships, tyranny, AI takeover, corruption, monopolies of power—they’re all terrible because they’re states in which there is a winner and the rest are losers. The game has to continue for as long as possible, both victory and defeat are death states in a sense.
Even my studies are a kind of game, and the difficulty of the topics posted on this website is the resistance. Discovery is fun. If we make an AI which can think better than us, then this hobby of ours loses its value, the game becomes meaningless. The people trying to “save” us from life have already removed half of it. Human agency is mostly gone, mystery is mostly gone, and there’s far too many rules. Many people agree that the game is starting to suck, but they think that technology is the solution when it’s actually the cause. Modern struggles are much less meaningful, so it’s harder to enjoy them.
The ideal human life may be close to what you have, but the vast majority of humanity is and has been living in ways they’d really prefer not to. And I’d prefer not to get old and suffer and die before I want to. We will need new challenges if we create utopia, but the point of fun theory is that it’s fairly easy to create fun challenges.
I also prefer things to be different, but this is how it’s supposed to be.
If we play a game against eachother, I will actually prefer it if you try to prevent my victory rather than let me win. Doesn’t this reveal that we prefer the game itself over the victory? But it’s the same with life.
Of course, I’d like it if my boss said “You don’t have to work any more, and we’re going to pay you 1000$ a day anyway”. But this is only because it will allow me to play better games than the rat race. Whatever I do as an alternative, I will need something to fight against me in order to enjoy life.
I’m willing to bet that suicide is more common today than it was in the stone age, despite the common belief that life is much better now. I don’t think they required nearly as much encouragement to survive as we do. I think we have an attitude problem today.
By the way, if you were both human and god at the same time, would you be able to prevent yourself from cheating? Given utopia-creating AI, would you actually struggle with these challenges and see a value in them? You could cheat at any time, and so could anyone competing with you. You will also have to live with the belief that it’s just a game you made up and therefore not “real”.
Ever played a good game without challenges and problems to solve? Ever read a good fiction without adversity and villains? But our lives are stories and games. And when the problem is solved, the book and the game is over, there’s nothing worth writing about anymore. Victory is dangerous. The worst which can happen to a society is that somebody wins the game, i.e. gets absolute power over everyone else. The game “monopoly” shows how the game kind of ends there. Dictatorships, tyranny, AI takeover, corruption, monopolies of power—they’re all terrible because they’re states in which there is a winner and the rest are losers. The game has to continue for as long as possible, both victory and defeat are death states in a sense.
Even my studies are a kind of game, and the difficulty of the topics posted on this website is the resistance. Discovery is fun. If we make an AI which can think better than us, then this hobby of ours loses its value, the game becomes meaningless.
The people trying to “save” us from life have already removed half of it. Human agency is mostly gone, mystery is mostly gone, and there’s far too many rules. Many people agree that the game is starting to suck, but they think that technology is the solution when it’s actually the cause. Modern struggles are much less meaningful, so it’s harder to enjoy them.