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Alicorn comments on Local Ordinances of Fun - Less Wrong
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Comments (153)
Your ordering is correct.
The "unexpected blueberries" kind of surprise doesn't bother me as much as what I think the surprise-related law [AAAAAH] is getting at because the space in which blueberries are to be found is known to me and unrestrictedly open for my inspection. I also don't mind books being presented linearly if I can look on Wikipedia for the ending whenever I want, presents being wrapped under the Christmas tree if I have a reasonable expectation that I will get most of the things on my wishlist and few other things and I can look up what I asked for at will, people around me laughing at funny things they think of as long as they'll say what they were on request, etc. This even if I don't happen to look up/ask every time.
Here are some different kinds of surprises I can think of, it is not a complete schema and I'm not even sure I've picked the most natural boundaries - but I do think it's better than just using the word "surprise" as if we could talk about all these things at once:
S1) Being surprised to get something, when I would have been able to predict in advance how I would respond to it. (E.g. a spontaneous gift of chocolate.)
S2) Having knowledge withheld in order to experience a more gradual unfolding of knowledge.
S2a) Dramatic surprises; getting to follow the story as it progresses without knowing the ending already; being ignorant along with the characters (e.g. No Spoilers!)
S2b) Having the answer to a problem or theoretical insight withheld and finding it myself. (E.g. there are only solutions to the odd-numbered problems in the back of the book, or the proof is omitted as an exercise for the reader.)
S3) Having future experiences that are good in a way I couldn't even understand now. (There are plenty of experiences I have as a grown-up that would have been incomprehensible to me as a child.)
S4) Watching a scary movie and strongly suspecting that a scary monster is about to jump out soon, but not knowing exactly when, or what it will look like.
At different times in my life I've had different levels of liking/tolerance/disliking for different types of surprise.
How often do you take advantage of this sort of thing? To be specific, what fraction of books' endings do you look up?
I'm generally content not to look them up until I start wondering if somebody's going to die, or any time the suspense is being laid on with a ladle, or when I'm confused about what I have already read. I read really fast and I'll get to the relevant part soon enough. I don't know about fractions, and it's usually not the ending I'm itching to read - endings need lots of plot setup, I could read them and not understand what was going on. I just want to know if so-and-so lives or if such-and-such disaster occurs.
Once I stopped a TV show my best friend was showing me in the middle, when she wouldn't tell me a spoiler answer to a question I asked, so I could leave the room and look it up on Wikipedia. She knew all about me and spoilers, she just couldn't bring herself to say it.
How much does this inform your fiction-writing? In most story-telling there is some pretense of unpredictability. Some TV shows are exceptions, the kind where the producers basically promise the audience that nothing will change over the half-hour.
Another sort of exception is history. Some readers might be upset to have events of The Surgeon of Crowthorne spoiled for them, but for the most part it is not regarded as cheating to put down a history book to look up a character bio on Wikipedia. I think it would be an interesting constrained writing experiment to structure a novel in the same way, where the author couldn't rely on suspense to keep you interested in the plot. Perhaps there could be appendices with an encyclopedia style entry for each main character and each main event in the book, that the reader was encouraged to skip to as they pleased.
Oh, I'm perfectly capable of inflicting suspense on other people. I've seen it done enough. (But there are spoilers available to be clicked open on all the character pages on and I'll provide spoilers to anyone who asks nicely.)
Interesting. For more evidence of human diversity, I often have difficulty not telling people unrequested spoilers in otherwise-similar situations.
I think that one way to generalize this preference would be as follows:
"The Utopia should allow me to voluntarily -- and temporarily -- limit my own capabilities if I so choose, but it should never impose limits on them. In fact, the Utopia should provide me with vastly enhanced capabilities, if I so choose."
Thus, you could voluntarily turn down the gain on your Omni-Sensors when browsing the Farmer's Market, while knowing that you could turn them on at any time. Simliarly, you could disengage your Anti-Grav Flight Module in order to climb a mountain, as long as you knew that you could turn it back on at a moment's notice (or even faster than that).
Sure :)
What I had more in mind was a pleasant surprise with these characteristics:
In other words, the pleasant surprise is the strength of your positive emotional reaction to an event, not the event itself. That was the sort of pleasant surprise that I have trouble believing no one would enjoy, and that I would unreservedly not mind an FAI planning for me.
That wouldn't bother me, but it is in no way superior to knowing in advance that I will enjoy the activity the larger amount ahead of time.
It wouldn't be superior for you, but if an FAI, (or just a person trying to live by the principles of Fun Theory) to, is at some point required to simultaneously optimize an environment for both you, and someone who likes pleasant surprises, that would be an effective way to satisfy the other person's desire for pleasant surprises while simultaneously satisfying your desire to never be surprised in certain ways. It would be a good way to fulfill that Principle of Fun without harming any of the people whom it doesn't apply to.