thomblake comments on "Stuck In The Middle With Bruce" - Less Wrong

54 Post author: CronoDAS 09 April 2009 12:24AM

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Comment author: pjeby 09 April 2009 12:49:16AM 5 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: Emile 09 April 2009 06:26:35AM *  6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: thomblake 09 April 2009 12:43:09PM 8 points [-]

It should be noted that death is funny and pretty in Super Monkey Ball.