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Utopia Clicker

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68 pointscolinprince40 comments

That reminded me of an interesting Yudkowsky article [1] about how a utopia requires "high challenge" :

"So this is the ultimate end of the prophecy of technological progress—just staring at a screen that says "YOU WIN", forever."

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/29vqqmGNxNRGzffEj/high-chall...

He suddenly jumps from "making games easier for people who find them too hard" to "making games trivially easy for everyone" like its a natural conclusion. To me the natural conclusion is maximizing flow: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Is flow something intractable from the connection-forming complexity of an experience, or just a biochemical reaction to an experience the brain considers complex, immersive and valuable? As such, could the subjective experience of flow be simulated via a mixture of hormones/chemicals? If so, is any aim for a human just a task of simulating what seems a sufficiently valuable, non-hedonistic but ultimately some sort of balanced-nice-sounding-definition-of-happiness maximizing experience?

This seems intentionally naïve about game design? Game designers aren't idiots, games are designed to give you a pleasant challenge that ramps up at a satisfying level and feels fair and rewarding to the participants as they become more and more expert. It's actually a great set of ideas to reference if you're constructing a society.

That's the point of the article — the quote is supposed to be a kind of reductio ad absurdum of a simplistic view of game (or utopia) design.

Damn, now I kind of want to know what happens when one clicks through the whole book…

Me too. Someone please complete this and report back.

It just ends

Just view source. Alternately: setInterval(function () {document.getElementById('generate').click();}, 50);

> ...wow, that was a pretty good book.

> Hope you liked it.

> Thanks again for creating a utopia, by the way.

> Probably wouldn't have had time to read that book if you hadn't.

I created another 100 utopias after that with no update.

308.4 utopias needed to read the book to the end. no easter eggs or whales appear at the end of the book

function generateUtopiae(){ document.getElementById("utopiaGain").click(); setTimeout(generateUtopiae, 10); }

generateUtopiae()

I put that in my console and watched...

Alternatively click on the button and hold the Enter key :)

what? now you tell me??!!

setInterval( generateUtopias, 10)

Okay fine I get it. Over-optimization is futile, but go ahead.

setInterval(generateUtopias, 10)

Total utopias: 1123.4

YOU WIN: UTOPIA ACHIEVED

Okay.

At the risk of giving something away, it's definitely worth reading Moby Dick. I've tried to read some "old" "classics" in the past few years, and truth be told a lot of them can fall flat, feeling not only from but also stuck in a different era. Moby Dick is something I think folks should read. You won't necessarily love it, but it's so clearly an accomplishment that I think it's worth it. Even the much-maligned whale- and whaling-specific chapters say so much about the craft (is it even a novel?) of writing. It's the book that (thus far anyway) has most made me want to write a book.

At the very least, it "saves" your game between sessions, so you can continue where you left off. I wonder if anyone has made a book to be read this way so you can easily know where you stopped reading?

All the games on the Kindle console support this feature.

Hmm, this could be kinda nice, especially if you want to ctrl+f search for a previous passage, without the risk of jumping ahead and spoiling yourself. I wonder if any ebook readers (software or devices) have implemented that specific feature.

I agree. It is an amazing, quasi-anachronistic novel. Speaking of Utopia, Melville offers his own vision of it in Chapter 94, A Squeeze of the Hand:

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

It's an odd fish.

Good lord. May I ask what sort of sperm he was squeezing?

Sperm Whale, specifically Spermaceti: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermaceti

> Etymology The name "sperm whale" is a clipping of "spermaceti whale". Spermaceti, originally mistakenly identified as the whales' semen, is the semi-liquid, waxy substance found within the whale's head.[14] (See "Spermaceti organ and melon" below.)

Spermaceti: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermaceti

Heh. There are some similarly funny passages in Billy Budd (which I had to read in high school. I did not enjoy it.)

>Even the much-maligned whale- and whaling-specific chapters say so much about the craft (is it even a novel?) of writing.

It's been a while since I read Moby-Dick in my 11th grade English class, but the impression I got is that it's a whaling ship's operating handbook with some revenge-plot narrative flair here and there.

Moby Dick is a combination of a beautiful story combined with the most boring details imaginable about whaling. As far as I recall those details add nothing to the story beyond Melville being worried he would not have enough "street cred" with whalers unless he added enough details to show that he knows what real whaling is all about.

I have often been tempted to use a razor and go Jefferson Bible on that book, cutting out all the pointless detailed sections.

Just get ChatGPT to get rid of all the irrelevant parts of Moby Dick by Herman Melville, like the parts that describe whaling in detail, and are definitely irrelevant. Personally I just read the chapter headings and first and last sentences of each para, most of the stuff in between in 99.9% of books is just filler anyways

if all you care about is a plot summary, maybe. but that's not why i read books. i am interested in the scenery, the world building, how the characters are portrayed, what they experience. i want to read every word the author intended to put there.

"Moby Dick is a combination of a beautiful story combined with the most boring details imaginable about whaling."

As a Neal Stephenson fan this actually makes it sound quite appealing!

I disagree - nobody "should" read Moby Dick. As in, don't read it because you saw it on a "Top 10 books" list, or had it recommended to you by a friend. Everyone on their reading journey is at a different spot, and got there a different way. So I never recommend Moby Dick to anyone, even though it was one of my favorite reading experiences of my life, for fear that it isn't for a person at a certain time. Once they're ready for it, they may find it, and love it.

Anytime I try to read the classics, I am reminded that authors were paid by the word, and it shows.

Agreed, I much prefer Agile Standups for Dummies in A Nutshell to wordy crud like Moby Dick and Hegel, who were paid by the word.

I tried to read it. I don't think I got past chapter 1.

Here is a free audio book of Moby Dick. https://librivox.org/moby-dick-by-herman-melville

Maybe I'll try to listen to it some day.

find activities where you can listen on the side. doing chores at home, going out for a walk, exercising, commute to work (for anyone with a dreading long commute this drastically improved the quality of the time), running errands, shopping...

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