Thank you for clarifying your intended point. I agree with the argument that playful thinking is intrinsically valuable, but still hold that the point would have been better-reinforced by including some non-mathematical examples.
I literally don’t believe this
Here are two personal examples of playful thinking without obvious applications to working on alignment:
A half-remembered quote, originally attributed to the French comics artist Moebius: “There are two ways to impress your audience: do a good drawing, or pack your drawing full of so much detail that they can’t help but be impressed.” Are there cases where less detail is more impressive than more detail? Well, impressive drawings of beautiful girls frequently have the strikingly sparse detail on the face, see drawings by Junji Ito, John Singer Sargent, Studio Kyoto. Why are these drawings appealing? Maybe because the sparse detail, mostly concentrated in the eyes (though Sargent reduces the eyes to simplified block-shadows as well), implies smooth, flawless skin. Maybe because the sparsity allows the viewer to interpret the empty space to contain their own idealized image— the Junji Ito girl’s nasal bridge is left undefined, so you can imagine her having a straight or button nose according to preference. Maybe there’s something inherently appealing to leaving shapes implied— doesn’t that Junji Ito girl’s nasal bridge remind you of the Kanizsa Triangle? Are people intrinsically drawn to having the eye fooled by abstracted drawings?
A number of romantic Beatles songs have sinister undertones: the final verse of Norwegian Wood refers to committing arson, and even the sentimental Something has this bizarre protest “I don’t want to leave her now”— ok dude, then why are you bringing it up? Is this consistent through their discography? Is this something unique to the Beatles, or were sinister love songs a well-established pop genre at the time? Did these sinister implications go over the heads of audiences, or were they key to the masses’ enjoyment of the songs?
If you can think of ways that these lines of thought apply to alignment, please let me know. This isn’t a “gotcha”, if you actually came up with something it’d be pretty dope.
I agree. It seems awfully convenient that the all of the “fun” described in this post involve the legibly-impressive topics of physics and mathematics. Most people, even highly technically competent people, aren’t intrinsically drawn to play with intellectually prestigious tasks. They find fun in sports, drawing, dancing, etc. Even when they take adopt an attitude of intellectual inquiry to their play, the insights generated from drawing techniques or dance moves are far less obviously applicable to working on alignment than the insights generated from studying physics. My concern is that presenting such a safely “useful” picture of fun undercuts the message to “follow your playful impulses, even if they’re silly”, because the implicit signal is “and btw, this is how smart people like us should be having fun B)”