Human brains are wired such that we get rewarded for attending to surprisal. If we turn our attention toward things that surprise us we get excited—and our model of the world changes. It grows more complex.
This is easy at first. My one-year-old was in complete rapture today on seeing a hen. But after a while, hens do not surprise us anymore, even if they are scratching dirt. We need a bigger hit to get the same high. To make hens interesting again, you could perhaps read about how they originally lived in the jungle, or you might get into the biology of egg production, or, more likely, you’ll pursue something more interesting than hens. Any which way, by pursuing your interest, you will move toward complexity. The simple things do not surprise you anymore. So you turn your attention to more complicated things. This is an amazing algorithm: do interesting things and magically arrive at a complex understanding of the world.
Sadly, it also leads you down a path that will likely end in existential loneliness and sobbing. What leads you there is the fact that the particular complexity that catches your interest is highly idiosyncratic. People get interested in all sorts of things. I have heard, from credible sources, that there even exist people who are interested in the names of Brazilian soccer players! Having idiosyncratic interests that grow in complexity means that if you pursue them too far you will end up obsessed with things that no one else around you cares about.
— Read on www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query
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