As I said, your assertion that “Absolutely and unequivocally YES!” is entirely based on faith. I don’t buy it, and it holds no water here.
"“However, when we tested this idea in brain scanning experiments, we found that reward pathways responded much more strongly to the unexpectedness of stimuli instead of their pleasurable effects.” In other words, the subjects’ brains were more active when they were exposed to the unanticipated.
“We find that so-called pleasure centers in the brain do not react equally to any pleasurable substance, but instead react more strongly when the pleasures are unexpected,” Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns adds. “This means that the brain finds unexpected pleasures more rewarding than expected ones, and it may have little to do with what people say they like.”
One of my favorite media experiences ever was during college. Every week, my entire dorm’s suite would get together and watch the new episode of Lost Season 2. Regardless of your feeling on the show or it’s eventual conclusion, it presented mysteries and clues, and each new episode gave us new pieces to the puzzle.
We would gather weekly with our Chinese food takeout and watch the new episode, then spend another two hours discussing it, and what the new information meant. Each new episode gave us moments of cheering when our pet theory was proven right, dramatic lows when a character was killed, and a general sense of camaraderie that was built around this experience. I imagine this is very similar to many people’s experience with anime when you could only get it piece by piece as it was localized. In fact, Rym has spoken of almost the exact same thing, where watching Trigun together in almost the same manner was what helped to solidify the FRC as a unit.
Knowing the answers to the mysteries ahead of time would have completely eliminated that. No matter how the show ended, we always have that shared experience that only could have happened because none of us knew the outcomes. We spent far more time interacting and collaborating on the show’s content than actually consuming it.
If you decide there is no value in having that experience with those people, fine. But you can never change my mind that it wasn’t worth it to experience that show exactly as I did.
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There is not much written there. Also no link to the actual study. Also, they were squirting fruit juice into people’s mouths.
If I tell you you are going to Disney World vs. you reading you are going to Disney World, those are both equally unexpected.
Here you go:
The fact that they were squirting fruit juice is immaterial. It’s that people’s neural pathways responded more strongly to the unexpectedness of the stimuli.
Yes, and there’s a difference between someone telling you something versus getting to experience it for yourself without outside influence.
You just got surprised at a different time. Instead of being surprised when Darth Vader tells Luke who his father is, you get surprised when I tell you.
Different, but not necessarily better or worse. Nothing is actually spoiled or ruined. No justification for going through such ridiculous effort to avoid so-called spoilers. etc. etc.
I didn’t realize that when you say that Vader is Luke’s father, your words were framed with the dramatic buildup of the scene, the score, the actor’s performances, etc. If that’s how you choose to tell me, then sure, it’s the same experience. But if you just say “oh btw, vader? Luke’s dad.” And think that it’s the same experience as seeing it played out on screen as intended by the filmmakers, you’re either fooling yourself or being willfully stubborn.
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Imagine it’s super cold outside… like below zero, water freezing, painfully cold outside. I warn you that it’s cold outside and you can mentally and physically prepare for that. When you go outside, you’re cold.
Now imagine that it’s just as cold outside but you have no warning. When you step outside, the shock and surprise of the cold is going to be much greater than if I had warned you ahead of time.
I didn’t say it’s the same. I said it isn’t necessarily better or worse. I would bet that it is better. The movie is still great every time I watch it. It’s definitely not worth the insane effort and burden upon yourself and others to avoid learning one fact just to get a one-time cheap surprise.
This discussion has gotten remarkably philosophical. Back in physics, I hated when they gave general things. I always needed a specific thing. I didn’t care about the formulae for trajectory and angular force conversions etc, I did however begin to care when they were about cannon balls shot at blocks sitting on ramps.
My point is that, in my experience. Good works get better on repeated viewings/readings. The worst time I read the Dresden Files was the first time. The time I didn’t know what was going to happen. Every subsequent time was better.
What difference does it make if the first time I read them is different depending on my level of foreknowledge about them, if all this is gonna be trounced by the second read-through anyway?
That’s like agonizing over the seating arrangement at the dress rehearsal. So what if it’s different the first time if the duke sits next to the earl? None of this will matter on opening night, where the real action happens.
And the lengths people go to preserve that seating arrangement at the dress rehearsal. They disconnect from the internet for a full week just so they can preserve not knowing who Luke’s father is.
The crux of my whole point in this discussion is that if all we do in life is chase the next serotonin hit, I myself find that I get a better one out of experiencing media in the way the creators intended to. Sure I could see on Twitter that Vader is Luke’s dad before I go to see the movie, but for me, the rush is so much more satisfying when couched in the entire experience set up by the filmmakers instead of in a Twitter post.
In Avengers 2, when Vision picked up Thor’s hammer was a small moment that would have meant nothing if it had been posted on the internet ahead of time or had been in the trailer. (In fact, half of the trailer made it a point to show that nobody could pick up the hammer.) But when I saw it happen in the theater for the first time there was a moment of shock as the entire crowd gasped. Now that it’s out there, it’s just another scene in the movie, but I am glad that I was able to experience that moment that one time. Having that experience made that first viewing better.
In a life that’s all about moments, if I’m going to be investing my time and money to consume something, and that media’s creator wants to give me a moment that I didn’t expect, then I want to experience in the way that they planned, for maximum effect. Maybe you see no value in that for yourself, but it’s very hard to argue that it has no value for anyone.
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I can argue it, but my main argument is only in terms of myself. I go to reasonable lengths to avoid spoiling things for other people, even if I roll my eyes because I am the way I am.
Here is a specific example:
I’m glad I watched the Mustang video before hearing you talk about it. That way I felt genuine satisfaction about guessing the twist before it appeared. If I had heard you talk about it first, that satisfaction would have been deprived from me. It’s the definition of spoiling the experience.
If that paragraph looks familiar, I wrote it earlier in this thread as the thing you were responding to.
How is this a confusing example? There was an intellectual challenge, I rose to the challenge, and felt the satisfaction of doing so. But while I guessed the punchline to the joke, there was still uncertainty, so the actual horses turning up was still a funny moment. I felt pride.
If I had known the outcome already, I wouldn’t have felt that. That would have been deprived.
I know that Scott is incapable of understanding this, and I’m not interested in working out why, let alone trying to explain it to him again. But if you’re missing something after this, ask a more specific question and I’ll help out.
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Ok, so an intellectual response is some action on your part, something you do with media, or something you derive from media. That is what I didn’t understand. I get what an emotional response is.
If we’re talking horses and videos, for me I get the same intellectual response hearing someone talk about it as I would have watching it. (I don’t remember if I saw it or heard it first, still found it funny) My brain doesn’t work that way. If someone says the title of the video I start speculating what’s up instantaneously in parallel with my talking or listening or whatever I’m doing.
Furthermore, like… how do you know? What if we “spoiled” it by saying there was a horse, then you watched a video and instead the bike was derailed by Roy Mustang coming out of nowhere? (Ok this is funny, I can’t animate, but I wanna make this, just like a still frame of Mustang and Hawkeye covering the horses)
I can have it spoiled for me and still have the intellectual challenge in watching the video. And infact I do.
Despite all this, none of this compares to repeat viewing, but that’s a different argument.
I don’t get any more satisfaction from figuring it out before seeing the video than I would get from doing elementary school math homework. It’s obvious. If you feel pride figuring that out, I don’t know what to say.
The video is good because of the timeless physical comedy of the cyclist actually getting run over by horses.
But what if it was a State Alchemist with fire gloves knocking down the cyclist?
I didn’t look that closely at the link title before clicking on it. I then had four seconds before the horse appears. In that time I saw the empty street. I saw the buildings in the background. I worked out that it probably wasn’t the kind of neighbourhood that would have American sports cars. I checked the title of the reddit comment again. I thought “Hey, this is probably going to be a horse…” and at that moment the horse turned up.
When I clicked the link I didn’t even know it was wordplay or a funny video or a clever title or anything. No idea. And I worked it all out by clues from the background of the video within four seconds.
I didn’t “work it out beforehand”, I worked it out during, but before the reveal.
Sorry if this is only sounds as satisfying as elementary school math work, but for me it was a very fun, compressed, intellectual and emotional experience.
I did a test and showed my girlfriend that same thing, and then had a conversation about it, and that was way more fun than any continuing conversation with you about this topic Scott, so I’d appreciate it if you stop responding to me, or at least don’t mind if I stop responding to you, and let me have conversations with other people without jumping in and telling me I’m stupid.
Let it be known that sometimes people want a joke with the punchline explained to them and others simply do not. I am in the do not camp because the artistry comes from the setup and timing of it. Once you take that away I can never evaluate how good of a joke it is.
I think this discussion can be boilied down to this for any video that is less than 2 minutes long, just let the viewer experience it for themselves.
SPOILERS: This conversation with Rubin goes nowhere.
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