The nature of understanding and interest
I just had a short conversation with one of my professors about one of my most common topics of discussion, namely the role of human understanding in science and engineering. He made a comment like “the most interesting things in the universe are ones we cannot understand”, which seemed like a quite unusual thing to say. For me, there is basically no (intellectual) interest in things that I cannot hope to understand. I think this is part of the reason I am not much interested in the social scene. I insert the word “intellectual” simply to exclude things that are “interesting” solely because the result benefits or harms me personally, or members of the opposite sex I am “interested in” in the sense of attraction.
For me there is an interest, as sort of “beauty”, that is initially present in almost all complex physical systems, and which disappears when they go outside the grasp of understanding. Again, beauty is in quotes because there are things that look beautiful in a non-intellectual way. I was wondering about whether people on here find that interest and understandability also go hand in hand. By “understandable” I don’t mean simple, I just mean something that can be mentally captured in some way other than a series of equations impenetrable to anything but a computer.
In many ways, interest does not depend on understandability at all. We do not understand ‘electricity’, we simply observe facts about its make-up and extrapolate those mechanisms to fulfil our desires in other spheres.
So perhaps, interest is dependent (in large part though not totally) on manipulability and extending our control over our environment. An interest in the unexplained would arise from our cognizance of the fact that our control or manipupulability is incomplete and perhaps open to further conscious control.
So, I guess I lean towards your profs point of view.
I wouldn’t put it as strongly as your prof did, but there does need to be an element of mystery for anything to be interesting, though. That which is perfectly understood rapidly becomes boring. I think his statement would be true if you replaced “cannot” with “do not”.
Delayed intellectual gratification feels more pleasurable. You can either cause the delay yourself, like you can choose to go slow in a relationship, or you can have the delay thrust upon you by external obstacles (family, state, etc. wanting you to only have sex once conditions 1, 2, 3 are met). If you cause the delay of your own volition, the tension and anticipation feel contrived, plus you’re liable to weaken at any moment (this makes it a better test of resolve, though). So it’s better when the obstacles come from sources you can’t control — as when a problem seems mysterious, or when you can only discern the tip of the iceberg of the pattern.
It’s like those Magic Eye pictures: it feels best when your brain just starts to pick up the rough contours and your mind starts racing excitedly, wondering what it will turn out to be. Twenty seconds of edge-detection feels better than twenty seconds of staring at the already perceived form.
That’s a lot of careful quote marks you used in your posting! I’m puzzling over what they might signify.
It’s a mystery.
“Eureka” is one of the most pleasing emotions of mankind.
agnostic :
Delayed intellectual gratification feels more pleasurable
There is some reason for the delay in any gratification.
You might be interested in George Ainslie papers, specifically in Breakdown of Will and Emotion as a Motivated Behavior
That’s a lot of careful quote marks you used in your posting! I’m puzzling over what they might signify.
It’s a mystery.
Don’t explain it! It will cease to be interesting!
Well, I’ll follow amnestic’s suggestion, especially since I think I explain the reason for the quotes in my post (maybe you can have the fun of finding it).
I do agree that something has to be somewhat of a challenge to be interesting–that’s not what my professor’s comment was about (and it’s not much of a limitation either–most things any university or industry hires you to do will fall into this category). It was about the idea that most interesting systems are beyond the grasp of human understanding, and can only be described by abstract mathematical symbols or computer code.
Richard Feynman used to point out that in physics at least it’s only possible to deal with the absolutely simplest phenomena. Beauty would seem to be something we behold in simplicity once we are able to comprehend it, often in the form of a symmetry.