CronoDAS comments on "Stuck In The Middle With Bruce" - Less Wrong
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Interesting connection here with "Breakdown of Will" (which I finally received and read yesterday): Ainslie hypothesizes (rather convincingly) that pain and negative emotion are also associated with a burst of "reward" -- i.e. attention and interest. This might be where "Bruce" comes from... not to mention other forms of drama addiction.
(I'm tempted to link to this article from my blog as well, but the jargon really does make it a tough read. Maybe I'll wait until it can supplement a more substantive Bruce-related post of my own.)
I also read about some similar research on video games: when hooking machines to the brains of people playing Super Monkey Ball, they found that the biggest burst of reward was when the players died. They explained this by saying that that's when the most learning occurs.
I notice that myself when playing some games - "awesome, I just died ! I have to start over". For some games, Losing is fun.
I'm definitely a gaming masochist - I often like extremely difficult games the most, as long as the deaths seem fair. Having played games most of my life, I've gotten quite good at them and frequently get bored when a game is too easy.
Kill me more, please! ;)
Have you ascended in Nethack?
Yes.