The Yes bit was to you. The rest was to sushi, in agreement with you. Weirdly, this comment is to baker. Even weirder, it's from khaled.

I think it's time I watch all of Twin Peaks again, it's been a few months now. Great choice!

I enjoyed Get Back (the 8 hour version) much more than George Harrison did.

Yeah, or just as you get older, or after certain experiences, or from different standpoints or cultures. I hear music in its parts more because I have been in bands since I was at school, as a songwriter to boot. I can't not separate out the bassline, each part of the drum kit, the various harmonies, the effects applied, etc. even as I still hear the whole.

Different parts speak to me in different genres too. The double bass is king for me in jazz, pour myself over it. Melody is the most important part of songs for me. Some of that is going to be quite idiosyncratic, e.g. I'm hearing jazz quite differently to a jazz drummer or horn player.

Yeah that in a nutshell.

White people are black people, riots are protests…anymore doublespeak to add? — NOS4A2

I think you're in your own straw world on this one.

"... the freedom to kill whoever he wants..." — Kenosha Kid

How many black people did he kill again? — NOS4A2

Oh you're saying he wanted to kill white people? Well, he went to a black rights protest with a -- ahem -- automatic rifle, but yes he did have more occasion to kill white people. Maybe he wasn't that fussed about who he killed. A crowd is a crowd.

How many black people did he kill again? — NOS4A2

You think he wanted to kill black people too? You're probably right.

I guess that I am really asking about the nature of metaphysical realities which may be underlying our appreciation of music. — Jack Cummins

Ah, metaphysics... The world's your lobster!

I also wonder about the nature of the power of dance music as a way of uplifting the spirit and emotions. — Jack Cummins

A lot of those cultural differences derive from different dances (again, Adam Neely is really insightful on this). I think there's two really important factors in our appreciation of music, one relating to the social, there other to the aesthetic, with origins in dance and prayer respectively.

The so-called subjectivity of music is overblown. Yes, everybody *likes* different music, but that doesn't mean they hear different things. — coolazice

Surely as a musician you've noticed that you listen to music differently to non-musicians? When I speak to my partner about what I like about a song, she gives me very blank stares then mumbles something about listening to it as a whole not the sum of its parts. (She apparently hasn't heard Feynman speak about the beauty of a flower.)

Thank god it is not up to Dutch law, then. The US has the 2nd amendment, and in Wisconsin a man can bear arms for security. In other words, a man can carry a gun with the intent to protect himself. “Simply being armed” is not only a deterrent but an effective means to defend one’s life from violence. — NOS4A2

"... the freedom to kill whoever he wants..."

I believe there are different stages of mourning (or grief) that might point at what I mean more readily. I am talking about 'opinions' that bear some weight to them not some whimsy - certainly things like 'it is my opinion that chocolate tastes good'. — I like sushi

Yes, me too. If I've spent hours, days, weeks on an idea I wish to share on here, it's not whimsy. However I'd still rather it be torn apart than spending yet more time on an unworkable idea. Anger doesn't enter into it, and isn't a metric for sincerity.

Probably not. We might admire passion, argument with a hammer, etc. but it's difficult to see an upside to it in and of itself. My view... Anger is a motivator for defending a group against antisocial behaviour (plays for dominance, freeloading, exploitation, harm). It arises in places like this as a hangover from other stuff. I've been in some arguments that have heated, then cooled, and everything was okay in the end, but usually it spells the end of a meaningful discussion, including when I do it.

To repeat ... this was a conscious choice to make a point about people getting annoyed and being dismissive. That is was a carefully laid trap is also part and parcel of my point about being 'angry'/'annoyed'. — I like sushi

And to repeat, rationalising why you did it doesn't mean you didn't really do it. And you don't _seem_ to be unconcerned on being pulled up on it given your apparent aim was to be pulled up on it.

If you view some ideas as 'abhorrent' then are you absconding from reason by doing so? — I like sushi

No, I think it's perfectly reasonable to find lots of things abhorrent. Ethics is "practical reason", right?

It is up to me to convince you that you do cast out opinions due to anger/annoyance and if I cannot convince you then my argument needs work in some way. — I like sushi

Stating others' opinions for them without surveying them at all, even to bolster your argument, is dismissive. It also shows a lack in theory of mind.

That is standard. I am looking to rock the boat. If you are convinced you cannot fall out so be it. — I like sushi

From the same post:

I don't think ideas are really the source of anger, except horrible ideas. — Kenosha Kid

(i.e.there are abhorrent ideas that will always generate anger*)

I think it's generally the mode of discourse that enrages: hypocrisy, bullshitting, etc. — Kenosha Kid

On the first:

I think there is a problem here with referring to some ideas as 'horrible'. I don't see ideas as 'horrible' they are just ideas. Some have more use than others. — I like sushi

It's not uncommon for people even on here to promote ideas that would harm, kill, or constrain the liberties of groups of people that, by definition, the poster could not be counted among. Such ideas are abhorrent, and I believe it's a deficiency of humanity to not feel disgusted by them. Obviously said posters would disagree on both points :)

* Actually there are also _kind_ ideas that will always generate anger too. The same sorts of poster who post abhorrent ideas like the above tend to be enraged by notions like helping others, and enraged by the liberties of others to explore political options. So it goes both ways.

Postmodernism is also a great way to piss people off :rofl:

Yes. you are pre-emptively dismissing the opinions of others by replacing them with your own. If you're against dismissing opinions, why not find out what they are, rather than deciding what they are?

When I create a thread here, it's principally to survey critique. I'm inviting difference of opinion, the benefits of which are: 1) if my thinking is crap, friends here will demonstrate that, saving me from wasting more time on it; 2) if it's solid, I can demonstrate that to myself by defending it (like a thesis defense); 3) if it's kind of there but flawed, discussion will help develop the bits that need developing.

I don't think ideas are really the source of anger, except horrible ideas. I think it's generally the mode of discourse that enrages: hypocrisy, bullshitting, etc. If you're enraged by people not agreeing with you, however strong their counterargument, that seems like a personal problem to me.

I started a thread here ages ago that a couple of good people destroyed in no time at all. I thought that was great. It was clearly an incorrect thesis and I'm glad it didn't take 15 pages to realise that.

NOS has more or less stated that the kinds of human rights governments uphold are violations of the kinds of rights he believes in. He basically wants the freedom, in principle, to do whatever he wants to whoever he wants, kill anyone he wants by whatever means, without fear of the state curtailing that liberty. He wants, in principle, to be able to be a slave owner, attack his own government, exploit the vulnerable. I'm saying "in principle" because he doesn't want to do any of these things, rather he wants the _right_ to do these things.

However, he doesn't want this right for everyone. He has historically taken a dim view of other people's freedoms.

But it is not beyond the realms of possibility that curiosity itself drops out of the odd and obtuse considerations of thermodynamics - indeed, somehow, I suppose it must be so, if we are physical entities. — Banno

Yeah, you can't learn or build jack without it.

That's why, in my humble opinion, (religious) miracles are a scientific obsession and yet if you look at what Hume says - a miracle should only be believed if its falsity is even more miraculous - it would seem that scientists are extremely reluctant, even openly hostile, to give due consideration to miracles (basically counterexamples to the laws of nature). I just don't get it. — TheMadFool

I think it's a question of the reliability of the evidence. One of the key features of miracles is that they're not reproducible. The Stern-Gerlach experiment is. They were both mysterious at some time, but the latter was reproducible, and therefore credible.

That said, there is an obsession with miracles and spirituality in the sciences at a lower (pop-sci) level, so I guess some people are looking into the kinds of thing you mean. I recall a New Scientist article on a theory about how the parting of the Red Sea might actually have occurred.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19489-how-wind-may-have-parted-the-sea-for-moses/

^ Not sure if the same one. I remember the article being much older. Could be a reprinting, or the date it went digital.

The dark room is a red herring. — Banno

Well yes, that too haha

What about when surprise becomes confusion? — Banno

And there's another problem. We _like_ confusion. The history of science is predicated on the attraction of surprise and confusion. There's nothing sweeter than an observation that doesn't fit the model. Moths to a flame.

Indeed, as I noted earlier, a theory that explains everything, explains nothing. — Banno

Aye.

No, that's a red herring of my own making. I think the theory is incoherent for needing to give rise to opposite predictions at different (what the article calls) scales, and doesn't actually relate to the biological or evolutionary processes that must mediate the optimisation. I.e. it's not predictive or descriptive.

Yes, you can pick something (dark caves), apply it one way (our models wouldn't be fit for such an environment, maximising present surprise), and get the desired answer. Or pick something else (going night-diving), apply it in a completely different way (curiosity adds information to our model, minimising future surprise), and get a very different answer. That's not encouraging.

Its not that there's no relationship either between gap analysis of this kind and e.g. fear of the dark, wariness of tigers, etc. which is why it's obviously going to have touchpoints with how nature actually works. But these things are generally mediated in myriad ways antithetical to what the article is talking about. Fear of the dark, of rustling bushes, etc. aren't actually to do with differences in prediction versus environment, real or imagined, but have been selected for by another, quite different optimisation algorithm that isn't minimising that gap but maximising a predominance of features in a way that largely bypasses environmental modelling, preferring a better-safe-than-sorry bias toward interpreting mundanity as surprise.

The red herring being that I made a judgment about _why_ such a theory might be attractive (totalising) and why it wouldn't work (treating many things as one thing). But that was quite a peripheral point.

Again, you miss the point. That was a "bye". Don't be clingy.

I feel really bad for you and your sister. Before hitting the "ethical conundrum", it's maybe worth considering whether, even with sacrifice by yourself, there's actually a good option at all. You can't actually promise to take care of her, however much you may intend to do just that: shy of sending your own self mad, and keeping her a prisoner to boot, she's always going to be capable of (and perhaps sometimes inclined toward) a bad ending.

Okay...

What would you advise to a friend in the same situation, and why?

She's your sister, not your child. Your father bears more familial responsibility, and "I've got work to do," is still an abdication of that responsibility.

Ultimately the decision has been begun at a very high level. The state has a choice in either funding skilled professionals to take care of its most unfortunate citizens, or else going "Fuck it, she ain't paying taxes, who cares?" Before you risk blaming yourself, both your country and your father have passed on this problem. Your sense of responsibility is third-hand at best.

Making yourself miserable for an indefinite period of time, probably forever, with likely no respite in your sister's misery, seems to be multiplying suffering, not minimising it.

You will naturally want to strive to help your sister, she's kin. It doesn't follow that you can. Our altruism toward others is old and won't necessarily find resolution in the society we live in.

Are there other organisations, aside from family and state, who are equipped to assist? Will this cost, and is it possible to raise the money? (Your father, other family, crowd-funding, state funding?)

Do you read what I say? Of course once you can prevent the environment from increasing your belief uncertainty, you then lock in the possibility of ratcheting belief in the direction of ever-broader uncertainty. — apokrisis

You seem hell bent on missing the point. Fill yer boots obvs.

And you are simply wrong on that score. — apokrisis

:rofl: Okay, strong argument, I got no counter. Peace out.

It is not about subserving a feeling - even if it might feel like something to be alerted, focused, engaged. It is about a certain kind of surprise or prediction error that leads to a positive orientation response. A global decision to approach closer and explore, gather more information. — apokrisis

Why do you think that dopamine response evolved? Why do you think children are naturally drawn to novelty? Just for the luls? It's there to maximise information for building models about our environments.

You then go on to discuss it in terms of some pop-neuropsychology bullshit... — apokrisis

I'm dismissing it in terms of its fidelity to actual biology. That will have different degrees of importance to different people, of course.

The difficulty with the surprise avoidance theory is that, even here, it provides an answer: the cave is to be avoided precisely because it holds surprises. — Banno

Tbf I've never argued that this was even a good question. There really _are_ optimisation procedures for ensuring that biological models of environments (not just mental models, but in the physical makeup of the organism) are a good fit for the environment you find them in. Nonetheless, I like night-diving. It's excellent! And the only time I'm apt to have to deal with that environment is... when I'm night-diving.

So okay we can say "Ah but yeah no the algorithm doesn't know which environments we have to adapt to in future, so it's best to sample them all." So then which is it? If the phrase "minimising surprise" must mean not living in dark caves because we don't have a model for that, and exploring things not in the model to prepare us for future surprise-minimisation, i.e. both X and !X, it's not a good definition. The article reminds me of bad psychologists and sociologists who pick the statistical tests to give closest to the desired answer, except it fudges its meaning over scales instead.

So Kuhn was wrong about paradigms? — apokrisis

That has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Do you see how you just employed the data processing paradigm that Bayesian mechanics replaces to try to argue against Bayesian mechanics? — apokrisis

I'm not arguing against Bayesian mechanics. Not liking turkey doesn't make me a vegetarian.

You are creating your own confusion by talking about surprise as if it were just a “feeling” here and not an information theoretic metric. — apokrisis

Again, the definition is quoted above. I know your initial MO was to claim that, by disagreeing, I must be employing a different definition, but it's a tad late for that now. I'm speaking of it in the same terms as the paper, both as a metric to optimise and, as per the paper, how it ought to be used scientifically, i.e. in predicting outcomes. And, as I said, I'm quite sympathetic to viewing nature in terms of parameter optimisation, that's my go-to. But, again, just because I like duck, doesn't mean I like turkey, and this is a turkey.

He is giving neuroscience its own proper physicalist foundation - Bayesian mechanics - to wean it off the Universal Turing Machine formalisms that want to treat the brain as a representing and simulating computer. — apokrisis

Any kind of science needs to be driven by evidence, not a desire for totalising unity. We do not accept theory on the grounds that it's neat, but on its accord with observation.

That, and a theory that insists we minimise surprise by maximising surprise is just incoherent.

When he talks of surprise, it is as a technical term within a new mathematical structure. — apokrisis

He defined surprise in the article; I quoted it above. Yes, a human is only one example of a biological system, but you only need one counterexample to falsify a law.

The idea that this is what _evolution_, rather than a biological system, does is quite interesting. Generally, I tend to see nature working in the guise of optimisation procedures, and free energy minimisation is an optimisation procedure. The problem again is that there are already optimisations that better fit the facts. Essentially equating surprise minimisation with fitness might be neat, but it's not really explanatory. Evolution isn't really trying to minimise surprise; it's trying to maximise fitness.

I think there should be more radical change. — schopenhauer1

Sorry, that was descriptive, not prescriptive. I was describing what progressive nations are doing now.

The very system it is looking at is built on the norms that it promotes.. You can never get out of its own self-induced models. — schopenhauer1

Fair point. I've been thinking a lot about how we might have got to where we are (from equatorial hunter gatherers to global exploitative capitalists) and what paths are open to improve things. The best I can muster is pluralism. Our systems are totalitarian and difficult to move, requiring often bloody revolutions or (maybe, if we're lucky) catastrophe to be alterable even slightly. I think pluralism offers a chance to be more nimble.

I am just trying to push people along, give them the opposing view, get to a place where everything is considered. — schopenhauer1

Ah okay, I thought that was just you being a pessimist.

There's no need to explain that in order to show it happens, we already know it happens. It's therefore up to the person who questions that fact to explain themselves first. Have I understood your point? — bert1

Why activity in an integrated system is integrated with other activity in that system isn't begging for an answer. The how is still interesting. We don't need to consider counterfactual senses or nothing happening at all and work from there. However the question of why certain _kinds_ of perceptions are possible at all, i.e. how they do what they do, and how we evolved them, is still of interest. And of course how species make certain senses more prominent.

"How does a brain generate conscious experience at all?" ...is a different question from "Why do particular functions feel the way they do?" — bert1

There's a difference in complexity at first glance I guess, but my understanding from talking to neuro peeps like Isaac (he seems to have disappeared again) is that it's actually really difficult to separate out individual functions from overall considerations of consciousness, including non-conscious stuff. It probably isn't possible to have what we consider consciousness with just one sensor that, say, senses the intensity of ambient light (no colour or well-defined shape). Some think that language is also a necessity for consciousness (a story we tell ourselves). It's all a chaotic mess which makes it only the more intriguing to figure out how it actually works.

I was very much deterred from thinking of particular functions as in any way capable of being carved out of the whole and considered in a vacuum. It's not that they're not contributing to consciousness, rather that they do so in the context of everything else.

It's not that. — bert1

According to them. But it sure seems like that from the outside, including in Chalmers' case.

Apo weirdly has tried to just reverse the burden of proof and to ask "why shouldn't it feel like something" without having first said why it must. — bert1

There's nothing weird about that. Neurons aren't firing in a vacuum: the central nervous system is an integrated system. Biology can only do what it can do. If it does something, then clearly it can do it. Why does the response to a red ball feel like me _seeing_ a red ball and not a blue ball or hearing a red ball or feeling a red ball...? Well, it has to integrate somehow and biology only has so many tricks up it's sleeves. For a bat, a the sound of the ball might be something it sees. For a racoon, touch is something it might see.

I was wondering about the possibility of objective realities lying behind the arts and music. — Jack Cummins

I'm guessing not the kind like

the natural harmonics of notes, how the biggest contributors spell out the major scale, how playing the major scale but starting on the 6th creates a complimentary minor scale using the same notes — Kenosha Kid

though, or the objective musical landscapes in and of themselves.

shared meanings and experiences of sound and music. — Jack Cummins

One of the interesting things about music is that how it affects us is very much cultural. The Western tradition will always sound "right" to Western ears, Eastern traditions sound "right" to Eastern ears. Since the ancient Greeks, people have been trying to formalise an objective theory of music. In our more recent, more postmodern times we recognise that how we absorb music, including the language we use to describe it, is very much prejudiced by the music we've grown up surrounded by.

The jazz bassist and YouTuber Adam Neely has done some really insightful videos on this topic.

Nonphysicalists can hope that mind is a different kind of physical. I'd consider that a win! — TheMadFool

:rofl: :up:

Thereafter, minimising surprise involves seeking out surprise, aka novelty, in order to familiarise oneself with it. — unenlightened

Did you hear about the vegan who tried to eat all the cows so there'd be no more cows to eat?

My point is science, if there are absolute limits to science, may not be the only materialist/physicalist game in town. Another materialistic/physicalist, albeit nonscientific, perspective may be out there waiting for the right person to discover it, loads of luck a sine qua non as far as I can tell. — TheMadFool

Sure. I guess my response to that in particular is it would probably end up being absorbed by science one way or another. It steals the good bits of everything! :rofl: The distinction between 'physical' and 'observable (in principle)' is nought from where I see, and nature in general (and conscientiousness in particular) appears at least statistically predictable. A non-scientific source of sound physicalist theory would likely lend itself to a scientific basis. But I'd be intrigued to hear otherwise.

Musical language is built around metaphor. A note can be "sharp" or "flat". A chord can be "crunchy" or "spicy". A harmony can be "warm" or "cold". A percussive element can be "aggressive". Pioneers figure out what can be done, then we name things according to how they make us feel because music has no natural descriptive language. So the answer to the question:

where music takes them, and... why — Jack Cummins

is "depends on how the music has been designed" (with our without comprehension). Why does a Picardy third make me feel upbeat and optimistic...? I don't really know. I could point out that minor scales feel sad, major chords feel happy, that playing A major at the end of a piece in A minor is surprising (that dopamine hit again), but that well-considered chord progressions also make it seem natural.

I could also point at the natural harmonics of notes, how the biggest contributors spell out the major scale, how playing the major scale but starting on the 6th creates a complimentary minor scale using the same notes, how playing in that minor scale will therefore always make me feel away from home because ultimately I still feel like it should all resolve to the tonic of that major scale (e.g. C from A minor) but at the same time the minor scale itself is so devoid of tension it never feels like I should have to resolve anywhere, making me feel distant but whole... But I still don't really know why.

The explanatory gap is a scientific problem, not a philosophical aporia, because it concerns explaining facts of the matter which philosophy does / can not; therefore philosophers can only propose woo-of-the-explanatory-gap nonsense (e.g. panpsychism, substance dualism, subjective idealism) that only begs the question of one unknown with a further (metaphysical? magical?) unknowable. — 180 Proof

A month late, but a) :up: and b) I'd go further. The explanatory gap is itself an invalid preconception of what the answer must be, based on a prejudice against the notion that minds can be functions of lowly, base, physical stuff. It really doesn't matter what model of consciousness physics ends up with, consciousness is by definition "not that".

Would you, for example, agree with a person who claims that because a certain other individual (science) can't do something (can't explain consciousness physically) that that something can't be done at all (there's no physical explanation for consciousness)? There maybe a perfectly good workaround; we just haven't found out what that is. — TheMadFool

Good point. The argument "science has failed to explain consciousness" against science's ability to explain consciousness is common enough, although I don't think that's Chalmers' argument. Rather he is placing a limit on or domain for what science can tell us. That limit really reduces to the third-person/first-person distinction but that the insistence that this distinction is not the whole story, e.g. the subjective experience of phenomena is more than a frame-transform from whatever objective description we end up with (seeing a red ball is more than the neurological activity involved in seeing a red ball from the first-person perspective). Which is just another way of insisting that mind is more than brain function.

In a more mundane sense Bitter Crank is right.. what can happen is employers pay workers the same or more but reduce hours.. In other words, reduction in hours does not equate to reduction in pay, they have to be inverse. — schopenhauer1

That would likely happen quite naturally. The key to keeping wages low is to ensure that there are more people than jobs to give them. It becomes an employer's market. By reducing hours each person works, it becomes an employee's market. One only has to look at fields such as mine (data science) to see how scarcity drives up wages. This is why progressive nations need to put working hours caps into legislature: the preference for employers would be to have a smaller staff working longer hours: it keeps wages low, because there's a queue of people after your job.

But we like our plumbing, heat, cars, roads, electrical grid.. etc. etc. endless blather.. just think STEM fields. We like our movies, our popular music, etc. etc. We like our electronics.. we like our easy to obtain items from online or department stores.. The CEO would just say that their fiefdom provides for us the "free time" in our non-work time to enjoy all that stuff. — schopenhauer1

I really don't get your logic here. Your question was:

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

which seems to acknowledge the need for change. But you also seem to reject any answer that would require change.

Not really. Finding your lost keys might be a pleasing surprise. A sudden increase in your world certainty. Spotting the lurking tiger is something different, a sudden increase in your world uncertainty. — apokrisis

Indeed:

There are other, better, more factual reasons why we fear dark caves. — Kenosha Kid

and

there is no general rule of aversion to surprise, nor is one needed to explain why people don't run at spikes, off cliffs, or into animal enclosures. — Kenosha Kid

The problem is in trying to model all human behaviour according to one general rule when in fact it is an interplay between many physical processes evolved at different times in different environments, some overriding. Our fear of lurking tigers _is_ quite different from our innate curiosity for the novel, and should be treated as such.

The pertinent parts of the article:

Free energy, as here defined, bounds surprise, conceived as the difference between an organism’s predictions about its sensory inputs (embodied in its models of the world) and the sensations it actually encounters.

and

Under the free-energy principle, the agent will become an optimal (if approximate) model of its environment. This is because, mathematically, surprise is also the negative log-evidence for the model entailed by the agent. This means minimizing surprise maximizes the evidence for the agent (model). Put simply, the agent becomes a model of the environment in which it is immersed.

This is the notion of surprise I and (I think) are talking about. The brain models its environment based on past sensory input. When it finds something surprising, i.e. that the model could not predict, it rewards itself with a hit of dopamine. On an evolutionary scale, sure, we may have evolved the above to maximise evidence to optimise that model. However the answer to the question stands. There are other, better, more factual reasons why we fear dark caves.

However I can tell that you have a very precise idea of how the mode of discussion should go, so I'll make this post my last. But for the record, the article does answer your question (read to the end).

QUESTION: For most of our history, hunter-gatherers managed this task and didn't spend anywhere close to 40 hours a week doing it. Can mechanization and automation deliver the basic requirements and allow us the leisure of hunter gatherers?

Around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago there was a critical shift: We started domesticating plants and animals, doing agriculture, and living in large groups in one place. Some anthropologists think that humans were one of the animals that got domesticated by a brand new power elite. From there it has been down hill ever since--for the average non-elite human. Exploiting other humans has proved to be a reliable way of getting ahead in the world--not since the industrial revolution, but since the agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago. — Bitter Crank

:100:

I don't think we all have to spend 40 hours a week 'reproducing and maintaining society', but life in the global society has to be simplified, especially for 1st world people. We need to stop doing a lot of the stuff we are doing that is aimed at keeping the economy revved up--advertising, marketing, promotion, selling, financing, upward mobility, ceaseless acquisition of new gadgets (be it a fancier watch or a bigger Tesla) and so on.

Simplify, simplify, simplify--both an end and a means. — Bitter Crank

:clap:

I was going to write something similar but you nailed it.

The affective state of surprise isn't what's intended by surprise minimisation. Worth keeping in mind it's a technical term in the underlying theory. — fdrake

Going back to the OP:

If biological systems, including ourselves, act so as to minimise surprise, then why don't we crawl into a dark room and stay there? — Banno

With our without pink elephants and interesting edge cases, it isn't true that we minimise surprise in the way Banno is suggesting. In particular:

We should thus remind ourselves that even surprise relative to our best model can be tolerated, as evidenced by surprisingness to the conscious agent who may often – though not too often on pain of death – find herself in quite surprising and unexpected situations.

is not at all (ahem) surprising, since there is no general rule of aversion to surprise, nor is one needed to explain why people don't run at spikes, off cliffs, or into animal enclosures.

I know children are powerfully rewarded when they experience novelty as long as they feel safe. — frank

:up: And they need to be taught safety. Most young children are pretty fearless about climbing out of their cots (or up to the cookie jar). Certainly there are self-preservation instincts at work as well.

"Surprise" here has a special meaning... "the difference between an organism’s predictions about its sensory inputs (embodied in its models of the world) and the sensations it actually encounters". — Banno

Yes, same meaning I'm employing. We're quite surprise-a-philic if anything.