I always think of boredom as the chorus of brain agents crying out that 'whatever you are doing right now, it has not recently helped ME to achieve MY goals'. Boredom is the emotional reward circuit to keep us rotating contributions towards our various desired goals. It also applies even if we are working on a specific goal, but not making progress.

I think as we age our goals get fewer, narrower and a bit less vocal about needing pleasing, thus boredom recedes. In particular, we accept fewer goals that are novel, which means the goals we do have tend to be more practical with existing known methods of achieving them such that we are more often making progress.

"it was keeping me in Near-side mode and away from Far-side thinking."

So this is following Robin's lead on implying that far-side thinking can be a permanent mode of operation. I don't think you have any choice but to operate in near-side mode if you spend a signficant amount of time thinking about any given subject. Far-side mode is the equivalent of a snap judgement. Most of the post is routine from that perspective. You identify weaknesses in the performance of snap judgements, and move on to spending more time thinking on the given subject, with naturally better results.

My optimism about the future has always been inducted from historical trend. It doesn't require the mention of AI for that or most of the fun topics discussed. I would define this precisely as having the justified expectation of pleasant surprise. I don't know the specifics of how the future looks, but can generalize with some confidence that it is likely to be better than today (for people on average, if not necessarily me in particular). If you think the trend now is positive, but the result of this trend somewhere in the future is quite negative, than you have a story to tell about why. And with all stories about the future, you are likely wrong.

Incidentally, "justified expectation of pleasant surprises" is exactly what I am assessing in the first few minutes of watching a movie. I am forming a judgement about the craft of the filmmakers, rather than anything particular with the plot, but whether I am in 'good hands' for the next couple hours.

If every game did things the same way, the fun value of that method would decline over time. This is why we have genres, and then we have deliberate hybridization of genres.

There still remains some probability that Aaron's recollection is wrong.

sexual wierdtopia: It is mandated by the central processor that participants stop to ask 'are we having fun yet?' every 60 seconds in order to allow the partners to elucidate and record the performance of the previous minute. Failure will result in the central processor rescheduling the desire impulse, and scheduling some other emotional context. This is not just for training, reason stipulates sexual performance can always be further optimized.

I don't know about you guys but I'm having fun just trying to keep this rock from rolling back down the hill.

Fun seems to *require* not fun in my experience with this particular body. Nevertheless, sign me up for the orgasmium (which appropriately came right after 'twice as hard')?

"The default, loss of control, followed by a Null future containing little or no utility. Versus extremely precise steering through "impossible" problems to get to any sort of Good future whatsoever."

But this is just repeating the same thing over and over. 'Precise steering' in your sense has never existed historically, yet we exist in a non-null state. This is essentially what Robin extrapolates as continuing, while you postulate a breakdown of historical precedent via abstractions he considers unvetted.

In other words, 'loss of control' is begging the question in this context.