Learn why learning too much can make you less passionate and how AI is resurrecting ancient board games. Plus: trivia! Learning too much about your passion may make you less passionate about it by Kelsey Donk Lange, A. (2021, March 28). Your passionate hobby might make you less passionate, study finds. The Academic Times. https://academictimes.com/your-passionate-hobby-might-make-you-less-passionate-study-finds/ Rocklage, M. D., Rucker, D. D., & Nordgren, L. F. (2021). Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience. Journal of Consumer Research. https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jcr/ucab015/6171148 Episodes referenced in Curiosity Challenge Trivia game: What do these things have in common: https://www.curiositydaily.com/we-can-use-dna-for-data-storage Memorable postal codes: https://www.curiositydaily.com/post-traumatic-growth-is-a-pandemic-silver-lining/ Slug that cuts off its own head: https://www.curiositydaily.com/you-can-totally-bs-a-bser/ The Digital Ludeme Project is using AI to learn the rules of ancient board games by Grant Currin Schultz, I. (2019, September 26). Researchers Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Reconstruct Ancient Games. Atlas Obscura; Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-games-artificial-intelligence Digital Ludeme Project. (2021). Ludeme.eu. http://ludeme.eu/index.html Play the games: https://ludii.games/ Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Learn why learning too much can make you less passionate and how AI is resurrecting ancient board games. Plus: trivia!
Learning too much about your passion may make you less passionate about it by Kelsey Donk
Episodes referenced in Curiosity Challenge Trivia game:
The Digital Ludeme Project is using AI to learn the rules of ancient board games by Grant Currin
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/using-ai-to-play-ancient-board-games
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why learning too much about your passion may make you less passionate about it; and how researchers are using artificial intelligence to learn the rules of ancient board games. We’ll also test your podcast knowledge with this month’s Curiosity Challenge trivia game.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Have you ever met someone who’s such an expert on their hobby that they hardly seem to enjoy it anymore? Well, you’re not alone. A new study of passionate film buffs, beer drinkers, and wine lovers suggests that learning too much about your passion may actually make you less passionate about it. Luckily, there’s also an easy fix.
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts and Northwestern University started their study of people’s passions by analyzing online reviews. They looked at 6 million observations made by more than 700,000 consumers about films on Rotten Tomatoes, beers on BeerAdvocate, and wines on CellarTracker. To keep track of the emotions the reviewers expressed over time, they measured each review against a scored emotional lexicon — basically, a glossary of words like “loved” and “distressing” that experts have scored according to the kind and amount of emotion they express. Whether the hobbyists were reviewing beer, wine, or films, they got less emotional with every review. As they learned more, tasted more, and watched more, they became numb to their passions.
Next, the researchers asked different people to respond emotionally to photos. A random half of the participants started by taking a photography lesson. People who learned about photography and then said they used that new knowledge scored lower on the emotional scale than they had before they learned. The people who knew the most felt the least.
That’s weird, right? Gaining expertise is supposed to have so many benefits. Past studies have shown that experts are better at processing information, remembering facts, and sometimes even making decisions. But these researchers say that it’s exactly those improvements that lead to emotional numbness. When people know more about a certain subject, they use that knowledge as they watch new movies or drink new beers and wines. And that’s actually… not that fun.
But there is hope for hobbyists who want to get their verve back. In the experiments, all the participants had to do was focus on how they felt rather on what they knew. When the participants were specifically told to focus on the feeling evoked by each photograph, the experts ended up having the same emotional response as the non-experts.
If your hobbies don’t spark the same joy as they once did, try to put your knowledge aside and tap into how it makes you feel. Expertise is a great thing, but enjoyment is too.
It’s time once again for the Curiosity Challenge! Every month, I call up a listener and put them to the test by asking them questions about stories we ran on Curiosity Daily in the previous month. For this Curiosity Challenge, I talked to Rob from Cedar Falls. If "Rob from Cedar Falls" sounds familiar, well, that's because we answered a listener question from just such a person a few weeks ago — it was the one about how much the Earth weighed. But this is not the same Rob from Cedar Falls, which means that this Rob from Cedar Falls was really confused when he heard that episode.
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Three for three! See what happens when you study, kids? How did YOU do? If you’d like to play next month, OR if you have a question you’d like us to answer on the show, shoot us an email at curiosity at discovery dot com, or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208!
Archaeologists have found the remains of a lot of ancient board games. What they haven’t found are the remains of a lot of ancient rules. That’s why a group of them have teamed up with game historians and software engineers in the quest to figure out how ancient games were played. And they’re doing it with a little help from artificial intelligence.
It sounds like an impossible task: imagine giving future humans some Monopoly pieces and zero instructions and asking them to play. But as it turns out, there’s a science to it. Classic board games like chess and backgammon can be broken down into basic units called “ludemes.”
Ludemes are the individual genes that make up a game’s DNA — the number of players, the way the pieces move, how to win, that kind of thing. Ludemes are useful because they let modern researchers create models of ancient games they’re trying to figure out. This isn’t a new concept: the term was first used in 1970. But researchers are excited about the new AI because it’s going to speed things up.
Until now, researchers had to guess how a game might have been played and then play by those rules over and over and over again to see if they worked. Now the AI can play tens of thousands of rounds of games with all sorts of ludemes. It won’t give researchers the answer, but it will help them decide which rules are probably the right ones.
The coolest thing about this research is its ultimate goal: a global genealogy of games. See, people have played games for at least as long as civilization has existed. Ancient Egyptians loved senet [SEN-it] so much that King Tut was buried with four sets. The Royal Game of Ur was so important to the ancient Sumerians that its instructions were recorded in cuneiform, one of the first writing systems.
Very early games spawned lineages that different communities adapted and remixed to suit their needs and tastes. Archaeological evidence shows that many games emerged in the Fertile Crescent and traveled along the silk road into Europe and Asia and beyond. Some of today’s most popular games trace their roots back to the very beginning. We’re talking classics like chess, backgammon, parcheesi, and snakes and ladders. This project will help to fill out that ancient family tree.
If this story captured you, I’ve got good news: the researchers have made a lot of these games freely available to anyone who wants to play. Check out the link in the show notes to get started!
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about why mushrooms are more like humans than plants;
That time people were worried that astronaut farts were a fire hazard;
How emotions impact online reviews;
The Birthday Paradox;
Whether your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body;
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Kelsey Donk and Grant Currin.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also an audio editor on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a nice, relaxing weekend — by checking out some saxophone quartet music! Then, join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!