Quote:
Originally Posted by KnoxKnoxJoke
But sometimes my mind starts to wonder and something about grinding poker just makes me feel like the world is pointless. I think it may be related to the psychology of ignoring short term results in poker
My hypothesis on it is it comes from conceptualizing too much. Rickroll mentioned you maybe autopilot too much that is why your mind wanders off and that too imo would come from conceptualizing too much.
When I was in 7th grade, I read the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. I was fascinated by that book, explaining modern physics, both astronomic phenomena as well as particle physics. I became obsessed with it, I read that book twice, then read other books on physics and for a while all I could think about were the theories of Einstein, quantum physics etc.
At some point I became really depressed though, thinking "man, they figured almost everything in the universe already out", which of course is not even close to true, but in my mind at the time that is how I perceived it. It was only much later, when I realized how much I became stuck in conceptualizing and stopped questioning and wondering. I had given way too much authority to the information I had picked up and I did not allow room for new possibilities anymore.
By now it is clear that alot of the stuff that I read back then might not stand the test of time, new discoveries lead to new theories in physics etc.
We all know those stories from history when people thought they have figured it all out and vehemently fought against revolutionaries who were about to change the world view of the whole human population. There we can see the ignorance, when we look back in time. But this same thing is still prevelant in every one of us today.
The moment you think the game is solved and you can not learn new things anymore, or all you can do is finetune your mechanic actions, I think that is the moment you put yourself in danger of not learning as much anymore as you could with a more open mind and the same thing can also lead to depressive feelings as with me when I read that book and thought physics is solved.
I think one always needs to challenge their own mind and preconceptions about everything. Whatever we do there needs to not only be a mechanic, scientific way to it, I believe we also need to maintain a certain level of constant wonder and mystery, wanting to find out more.