h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I very rarely get bored.
This is not necessarily a positive thing.
It means I spend large amounts of time doing things some people think are pointless: staring at things for example (though I do usually use the information for drawing at some point.

I have a theory: humans use boredom to prevent insanity.

I read some time ago that there is no way for a computer to tell how long a task is going to take: you only know the processing time once it is finished. I wonder if this is still true. If it is, artificial boredom needs to be invented.

Take the following experiment as an example:

"Computer, sing the song 'Ten green bottles'"
Computer: "Ten green bottles hanging on the wall, ten green bottles hanging on the wall, and if one green bottle should accidently fall, there'll be nine green bottles hanging on the wall. Nine green bottles..." (etc, down to no green bottles).

"Ok Computer*, now sing the song 'ten million green bottles'"
Computer: "ten million green bottles... nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine green bottles....."
and so on and so forth.

Whereas even if a human being couldn't guess the length of the task from the title of the song (using prior learning), they would surely give up from boredom (nature's safety valve) before getting to the end.

The alternative would be to waste an entire existence singing the song, and having to pass it on to the grandchildren, and their grandchildren's grandchildren to finish it off.

(Where such a person would find the time to find a mate and create the necessary offspring, assuming that any other person could put up with their constant singing, or even to find food for themselves and not starve in the process of keeping up the song is anybody's guess).




* Hitch-Hikers and Radiohead reference in one. Perfect!