[HN Gopher] Why monotonous repetition is unsatisfying
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Why monotonous repetition is unsatisfying
Author : yamrzou
Score : 26 points
Date : 2024-06-30 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (patterns.architexturez.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (patterns.architexturez.net)
| vunderba wrote:
| Tell that to the staggeringly large number of people who enjoy
| "clicker games."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game
| poldk wrote:
| Those are not 100% repetition.
|
| Little change in agency outwardly, but there are new details to
| review.
| catach wrote:
| Incrementals tend to rely on a drip-feed of new mechanics and
| capabilities at the introductory phase, extensive automation in
| the middle phase, and marathon-like competition against other
| high-ranked players in the elite phase.
|
| I don't think it's a particularly good counter-example.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I played through Universal Paperclips 100 times in a row, but I
| was always seeking to optimize it. I agree that doing things
| exactly the same way gets old quickly.
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness*]
|
| * because repetition is offtopic on HN:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| malfist wrote:
| Tell that to people who meditate regularly
| sunday_serif wrote:
| Tell that to the lap swimmers.
| samatman wrote:
| Lap swimming is _alternating_ repetition, which Alexander
| specifically cites as the soul-satisfying alternative to
| simple repetition.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Tell that to the next person who types "Tell that"
| inkubus wrote:
| I myself found a kind of zen in doing repetitive, monotonous
| tasks: doing dishes, laying bricks, updating 50 YAML files with
| the same changes...
| ajuc wrote:
| Another example is music. Music needs to have a repetitive
| pattern, but it shouldn't be too repetitive or it's boring.
|
| The best combination is to establish some patterns by repetition,
| then break these patterns and introduce new ones to keep the
| listener guessing, but the deviations should form a bigger
| pattern as well. It's the best when you can notice the pattern
| quickly, then before it gets boring it changes, and the new
| pattern feels like you could have predicted it - but you didn't.
|
| The concept of tension and resolution is fundamental in music,
| and I think this is very closely related to expectation and
| surprise - and thus to repetition and pattern-breaking.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| From Arnold Schoenberg's Fundamentals of Music Composition:
|
| > "Intelligibility in music seems to be impossible without
| repetition. While repetition without variation can easily
| produce monotony, juxtaposition of distantly related elements
| can easily degenerate into nonsense... Only so much variation
| as character, length, and tempo required should be admitted."
|
| I'm not completely sure how this squares with the fact that I
| can listen to a song that I like dozens of times and still
| enjoy it, but I definitely understand it from the point of view
| of constructing an interesting work in the first place.
| card_zero wrote:
| > we never find monotonously repeating forms in traditional
| cultures.
|
| Illustrated on the left by the Parthenon, with a row of eight
| identical pillars. This has a golden spiral overlaid to show that
| it's mathsy and natural. Halfway down the article there's a
| section "levels of scale" which asserts that the spacing of
| columns on temples is somehow magical and makes them alright,
| while modern columns are spaced differently and are all wrong.
|
| But no, it's just a monotonous row of pillars. If it had no
| ancient history it would look kind of oppressive (the same way
| any charming old castle was originally a military installation
| built to exert control and spew out steel-clad troopers).
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#The_Parthenon for
| more skepticism.
|
| Meaning matters more than neurology, usually. We like stuff we've
| been made to feel attached to, culturally. But the article also
| mentions honeycombs. If we _are_ going to talk about neurology,
| honeycombs will make some people (with trypophobia) very
| uncomfortable indeed, and the magical minor imperfections and
| irregularities of nature won 't counteract that at all.
| albumen wrote:
| Perhaps he shouldn't have used the word 'never' (never say
| never again), but you've unfairly represented the article. The
| Parthenon-and-golden-ratio image is not used as a reference; it
| is related reading. And if you visit that article, you see it's
| about how the Parthenon is NOT designed after the Golden Ratio!
|
| The main article's point about nested levels of repetition is
| interesting, and it introduced me to Christopher Alexander's
| The Nature of Order books.
| EGreg wrote:
| Kids like repetition of a certain kind. And people like
| monotonous activities and I guess "zoning out" too.
|
| However, I can tell you why we get _bored_ easily when seeing
| repetition. It 's that "we've grasped the pattern, it's very
| simple, and now we have more important things to do with our
| lives." Predicting the pattern isn't interesting anymore to
| anyone except maybe a kid for about 10 seconds.
|
| As humans, our curiosity drives us to seek out new things so we
| can explain our surroundings. Randomness drives us crazy because
| we can't predict what happens, and thus our ability to "prevent
| bad things" is hampered. Even worse than randomness is a _smart
| opponent_ , e.g. in chess, who thwarts our schemes by
| intelligently choosing a move based on preventing the traps we
| could lay. We may feel powerless at that point. But even more
| annoying, to the point of ANGER (a reaction that we and other
| primates resort to), is when the opponent makes sub-obtimal moves
| _because they can predict what we are going to do_ , or _quickly
| reacts to what we are doing_ , and therefore don't even bother
| defending against things it is confident we won't do. This is
| worse than us being able to predict things, it's worse than
| randomness, it's worse than optimal strategy, it's literally them
| "toying with us" and "cheating by predicting our very moves"!
|
| The reason we feel anger and tend to escalate (e.g. quit the
| game, flip the board) at that point, is that we sense not only
| how much weaker we are but that the other side is "making fun of
| us", toying with us, we have no hope of "winning" but also we are
| in a dangerous situation since the toying can turn into something
| more.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oue3pcmh-U0
|
| Try it with other people and you'll see exactly this ladder...
| deskr wrote:
| I feel like "unsatisfying" is an understatement, to put it
| lightly. How about soul destroying instead?
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