Post #2101041

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• @kst@post.lurk.org 2026-03-26 15:45

  @c_reider @Lime What I realized recently is that, this state of "flow" seems to have a lot to do with the sense of "control", the capacity to predict the behavior of your action onto the external world, to project your imagination, expectation into reality, the same concept as "skill" (or in other context "power", "freedom"). When reality doesn't react in the way you desire, the large negative prediction error leads to frustration, anxiety, a loss of control. If the reaction is too simple that you predict accurately, it's boredom. And in the sweet spot where the world does react roughly as imagined but the reaction is complex enough that you can't predict it entirely, it becomes a sustained stream of little surprises, the flow state, that you feel fused with the tool and ignore the time passing (Doomscrolling seems to exploit the same (dopamine) mechanism, so the algorithm shows what you want to see. Tension resolution in music and writing uses the same mechanism to excite emotions.) Think of the boundary between self vs. the outside world as what the mind believes to control. From this perspective, when you can reliably predict the behavior of a tool, it does temporarily become part of you. Learning is not only about the tool, but also shaping your mind so that your expectations align with what the tool offers.

  Open ##2101042