Hacker News Reader

Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

I've become more conservative because, to put it bluntly, I'm closer to death now. I've done my experimentation, I know myself pretty well now, I know what I like and what I don't. So my life is dull in the sense that I'll likely do the same things every weekend, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same places on holiday (likely on my home continent, perhaps even my home country) and so on.

View on HN

Sounds like the epsilon-decreasing solution to the classic exploration-vs-exploitation problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit#Approximate...

I would be surprised if there weren't papers arguing that youthful recklessness morphing into adult conservatism is a learning strategy favored by natural selection.

Given that this heuristic would have evolved when humans had a much shorter expected lifespan, I expect there would be a very large market for neuroplasticity enhancing drugs that also increase one's effective epsilon factor.

Yes that's one of the foundational ideas of evo bio. Young people are more risk-seeking.

So the closer to death you are, the less you explore what is left for you to explore in this world. Do you just not feel like you have the energy in finding new things to like or experience anymore because you don't think there is anything left, or is it just that you feel 'fed up' with new experiences since younger days? I'm just curious.

I think "new experiences" has diminishing returns like anything else. E.g. I could go to a new art gallery and that would be a new experience on one level - but I've been to quite a few art galleries, so I have a good sense of what going to an art gallery is like in general, and also I know that my favourite is pretty good, so it would be better to go back there. I could try a new sport, but I've played plenty of sports already - and a new sport is less likely to be more fun than my current favourite.

The novelty of novelty wears off.

The more I travel, the more I realize people and cities everywhere are more alike than different.

That may in part be the net and globalisation. I saw more differences travelling in the 90s than I do today.

Or you were 20 years younger in the 90s and things seemed more different because you'd experienced less? I have a really hard time getting into new music these days for that reason.

Literally there were fewer cities with McDonald's 20 years ago. Globalization is real.

It's not that novelty wears off, it's that your library of patterns has expanded to the point that fewer things manage to reach the same threshold of novelty.

To continue to experience novelty, you have to find new patterns, not just new things that fit patterns you know.

Hm, perhaps my ADHD is behind this as it ensures my interest generally fades. There's a few things that have stuck, but I think my mind is always prioritising novelty. There's been a few hobbies I'd really like to have kept on, but just can't. It can be a damn annoying condition! I'll rarely go to the same place for a holiday. Music and food changes too, but not as much.

Staying in tech has been easier as so much within it is changing.

I'm in a similar spot. On one hand, it can be annoying to have a relatively higher threshold for novelty, interest, and engagement. On the other hand, even while these tendencies have made me a bit of a dilettante or a dabbler, I also find that fiddling around on a lot of semi-related (or even unrelated) things can bring a different sort of experience and perspective compared to that which comes from deeper exploration of fewer fields/topics/skills/etc.

I'm not saying there aren't definite drawbacks but when considered like "it just is what it is" I can at least see some of the benefits. There's something to be said for in-depth knowledge and exploration on a specific field or topic but there's also something to be said for having a breadth of experiences and skills. In many ways it can make you more adaptable and when you find yourself needing to draw on skills and experiences, it's a lot easier when you're at least familiar with them even if you're not an expert.

Like I'm not a skilled electrical engineer but I've wired up a house and tied in a breaker panel as part of a job I held for a short time years ago. So when I need to replace a fixture or a garbage disposal, where friends might hire someone and pay several hundred dollars to have it done, I can do some quick research and leverage my limited experience to do it myself. For bigger jobs I still hire someone but that's just how it goes.

Or the fact that I'm not a software developer or network engineer but when I need to set something up on my home network or troubleshoot something at work, I at least understand basic concepts just from screwing with computers for so long and I can usually sort things out with some research or assistance. Most other friends and acquaintances outside the field would just look at something like setting up a home subnetwork and file server for IP cam surveillance as beyond their abilities. My general familiarity means I can sort it out with a bit of trial and effort.

Same goes for just about anything. If I've tinkered with something related as part of my neverending quest for novelty, I don't need to start from scratch every time I need to do something similar. And when a task or endeavor is outside of my abilities, those people who have dedicated themselves to a deeper exploration of a skill or field can come in and make use of their way of doing things. Can't run the economy on just tinkerers, obviously.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com