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▲ hmokiguess 5 hours ago

Why doesn't the meat suit enjoyment program comes with stronger guardrails or systems to enforce this?

One often wonders why bypassing enjoyment is so trivial, would you say this is a feature or a bug?

▲Waterluvian 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is that enjoyment has, oddly enough, been misallocated to all the liminal spaces and moments in life. So most optimization tends to elide enjoyment.

Enjoyment elision is the number one cause of meat suit user dissatisfaction. The engineers insist it's not a compiler design bug, stating that those moments of enjoyment are, in fact, unreachable. The UX team says it's not the user's fault either, as it's a fully intended UX choice. The current proposed solution is to push this issue upstream, requesting that all enjoyment be moved from the journey to the destination.

▲hmokiguess 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh very well, so it's corruption on the enjoyment program that leads to misallocation.

What are good logs or signals a meat suit user could monitor in order to watch for misallocation and allow the program to recover?

▲Waterluvian 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Review family photo albums and the stories told at gatherings.

▲hmokiguess 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Interesting, this feels like another chicken and egg situation with OP's parent comment related to spending less time in conceptual space.

I guess a meat suit user best system is to ensure its peer network has stable connections and to care for those.

▲goodmythical 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think it's that bypassing enjoyment is trivial.

It's that enjoyment is a secondary function to contentment and the user is allowed to pursue this secondary function according to their own desires. It is just that we often aren't taught the value of or the techniques involved in finding enjoyment.

Consider a professional athlete, a recreational league player, someone who watches their favorite team, and a team manager.

They are all engaged in their activities, originally, because of some enjoyment derived from the game.

But how often does each of them enjoy playing the game?

The recreational player probably gets more fun out of playing the game than the ones who choose to watch, even if they played in highschool.

When was the last time the player enjoyed the ritual of watching a game they aren't involved in?

The one who goes to every game probably gets more enjoyment from watching the game than a player on the sideline.

How often does a player enjoy arm-chair calling another game as opposed to a manager?

But, what happens as we age or in the face of injury? We learn to adapt to enjoying other aspects of our favorite activities. We do so because we are forced to without realizing that we could have been enjoying watching the game just as much as we do now post-injury.

We see this in streaming and video games: People who watch endless hours of games they'll never play, and streamers who never watch others play.

We see this in labor. As the buddhists say, "Before enlightenment; carry water, chop wood. After enlightenment; carry water, chop wood." Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, in other words.

The difference between a miserable manager and a jovial janitor is their ability to find enjoyment.

▲hmokiguess 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I didn't understand you, would you mind phrasing it differently?

▲goodmythical an hour ago | parent [-]

There are people who genuinely enjoy things that you or I don't find appealing at all.

We can use evidence for the ability to change what we find enjoyment in in the progression from soccer player to soccer manager to soccer fan. The individual who used to love playing the game is injured, ages, or isn't competitive enough to compete and so must turn to either management or being a fan if they are still to find joy in soccer. They are physically unable to enjoy it the way they used to and so adapt.

But, if one can adapt to being a manager after an injury, one can adapt to being a manager before an injury.

Outside of sport, we see the same in labor. Someone working a physically demanding job may find that they cannot compete in the market as their body ages. They must either adapt to become a manager or find some other job that is not as physically demanding. This too is a physically forced transition, but it shows that it is possible and could have been done before the aging.

In both, we find evidence that it is possible to find enjoyment in things that we do not already enjoy. The buddhists say "before enlightenment chop wood carry water after enlightenment chop wood carry water" because you change who you are/what you enjoy rather than what you do. The recognition being that there are things that must always be done: hygiene, food, water, shelter maintainence etc and that it is silly to waste our time hating or finding no joy in these things if it is possible for us to enjoy them.

We know we've got to pump water to drink and chop wood to keep the house warm, why be upset about it?