Comment by verec on In Praise of Boredom · 2011-01-01T16:08:45.351Z · LW · GW

The argument that you would loose interest if you could explain boredom away, which is what I have to conclude from your stance:

All novelty will be used up, all existence will become boring, the remaining differences no more important than shades of pixels in a video game.

seems a bit thin to me. Does a magician loose interest because he knows every single trick that wows the audience?

Does the musician who has spent a lifetime studying the intricacies of Bach's partita No 2 loose interest just because he can deconstruct it entirely?

Douglas Hoefstadter expressed a similar concern a decade or so ago when he learnt of some "computer program" able to "generate Mozart music better then Mozart himself" only to recant a bit later when facing the truism that there is more to the entity than the sum of its parts.

I do not know that we will someday be able to "explain magic away", and if that makes me irrational (and no, I don't need to bring any kind of god in the picture: I'm perfectly happy being goddless and irrational :) so be it.