In Praise of Boredom | Hacker News Reader

In Praise of Boredom

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41 pointslermontov18 comments

I'm of the opinion that it's useful to make a distinction between boredom and idleness. Idleness can be good (Bertrand Russell wrote an essay about this, which OP might be riffing off of), but boredom, in my opinion, is almost always not.

The article also seems to imply that boredom is some sort of ineffable, indescribable thing. I think it's actually quite describable:

Boredom (often described as “I have nothing to do / wear / watch / read”) is a bug we encounter when…

1- a tired mind 2- attempts to find an optimal solution 3- in a cluttered space 4- with options that have poorly-defined utility-values.

The solution, then, is to…

1. rest 2. satisfice 3. declutter 4. define your utility-values more precisely

There is also the possibility that there is no utility function available, i.e. one is unenthusiastic or indifferent to her surroundings or the work at hand. People that are easily bored lack the enthusiasm for trying things, playing, just "smelling the flowers", perhaps because they perceive no value in those things. Yeah, I'm one of those people, and dare I say, I'm bored by that.

> Bertrand Russell wrote an essay about this, which OP might be riffing off of

He absolutely is. I had Kingwell as a professor for an undergraduate seminar that focused on, what I imagine were, his early thoughts surrounding boredom. We read In Praise of Idleness, but also Virilio's Speed and Politics. Made for a really interesting juxtaposition.

I find your definition to be somewhat lacking, at least in terms of being bored at work. While 1 makes sense, as a lot of people are tired at work, if there is actually nothing to do, 2 does not necessarily apply. Also I assume 3 does not necessarily mean physically, but also mentally cluttered, to the point that it is hard to pick something from the mush of information floating about. That is understandable, it is hard to begin working when you don't know what to do, which leads into 4. But in a work sense, a lot of the time you do not have control over what tasks you are assigned, which makes it hard to define utility values properly.

Even though I can agree that tiredness can induce boredom, the other solutions to the problems you mentioned are not always applicable or their resolutions too difficult for an already bored mind to begin working on.

I meant boredom in a general sense, where you have control over your variables (ie you're bored by yourself, with yourself, at home).

If you're bored at work, that's a little more complicated. It depends on the context you're in. Is there "nothing to do", or is there NOTHING TO DO? (I experienced the latter context when I was in the military. In that situation, the best thing you can do is maybe read a book if you have one, or meditate and/or reflect on your life). You might have nothing to do if you were say, in some dead-end minimum wage job.

But if you're working in some sort of professional setting, there's almost always something you can do. You can learn more about the organization you're in. You can build relationships with other people. You can help other people out. You can ask your manager for more work.

In the worst case, if there's really nothing you can do, and if it's bothering you, you could quit and find a better job where there are actually things to do.

So jail is the ultimate solution to boredom?

The options you have in jail typically have shitty utility values, so no.

in Anathem, Stephenson wrote the aphorism, "Boredom is a face frustration wears." I've found that useful.

When I was a little kid and complained to my grandmother that I was bored, she would always say: "only fools are bored." I've internalized this.

Then there's Pascal:

> All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

How am I supposed to sit quietly when my neighbor has a bigger room?

That's what I'm saying!

A few points in the article reminded me of this John Berryman poem (Dream Song 14).

Having trouble with the line breaks, but it's best to hear him ready it, anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpimsgfNj7c

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detai...

Just in case anyone wants to read more on the subject, a friend of mine wrote a similar essay last year.[1]

Just today I was re-reading a Susan Sontag essay[2] and came across what I think is the most succinct description of boredom: “There is, in a sense, no such thing as boredom. Boredom is only another name for a certain species of frustration.”

[1] https://fallowmedia.com/2016/jun/boredom/ [2] https://www.scribd.com/doc/189866321/Susan-Sontag-One-cultur...

> Maybe boredom is not something we should be fleeing; it might be an important symptom of a more general existential malaise that bears thinking about. After all, boredom signals a problem with the world and our place in it. The second point is one best made, to my mind, by Theodor Adorno, whose excoriation of boredom is part of a larger, wholesale critique of modern capitalist society. You can scoff at this, of course, but Adorno was the first to see that contemporary boredom is a function not just of modernity but specifically of the political constructions of work and leisure. Boredom is ideology.

I disagree with that statement. We have it for one BIG positive reason.

Boredom = Creativity, especially with children.

I think that at least in some situation the opposite should be true, in so far a person's ability to daydream might depend on their creativity. Given a sufficiently high ability do day dream, the day dreamer is never bored, no matter how stimulus poor the environment is.

I think a good comparison would be how children have come to rely more on toy-play over imagination-play over the years (or centuries). Not long ago, kid might have had pretty fun day with nothing but a stick and a pool of mud (to use George Carlin's imagery). But if you took a contemporary child and blast them through a time-machine some fifty years into the past, they'd be massively bored once they got there (besides being somewhat shocked because of the whole being-kidnapped-and-shot-into-the-past thing). In this case, past children were more creative, but also less prone to boredom.

I'm not too sure about that. Even in the past you would have kids who had more than the other kids. Toys have been with us humans for as long as we have been around. We are always manipulating objects around us.

If you took a kid from today and shot him 50 years ago, he may have an adjustment period, but he may just find himself interacting with the environment more.

Kids in the past probably had more creative uses out of their environment but put them in the digital world and their creativity wouldn't be there.

I wouldn't say that kids at any time period in human history were ever more creative. They were just creative about different things.

Toys always have been around, sure. But their quantity, variety and complexity (note: I include video games here) has massively increased through economic development. A hundred and twenty years ago the median American child might have had a rag-doll. Seventy or so, a teddy bear. Twenty years ago, a whole collection of dolls and toy-figures.

In so far as simpler toys require more imagination than complex toys, I still think that the effective level of creativity required of children has fallen. But I think the issue you've put forward is fair enough: there's not much* reason to believe that the potential level of creativity of children has fallen. Children might have much higher creative potential than they're currently exploiting, in which case they'd be able to adapt.

*: If performance on tasks involving creativity is positively related IQ, that coupled with the Flynn effect would suggest that creativity has increased over history. I call this "not much reason" because I'm not to sure why the Flynn effect exists and I don't think the researchers are sure yet either.

The title of the review alludes to Joseph Brodsky's memorable essay -- originally, a Dartmouth commencement address that begins:

  A substantial part of what lies ahead of you is going to 
  be claimed by boredom. The reason I’d like to talk to you 
  about it today, on this lofty occasion, is that I believe 
  no liberal arts college prepares you for that eventuality...

https://relembramentos.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/in-praise-of...

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