I am speaking with my friend and he articulated a distaste for hedonism

He highlighted that hedonism is the opposite of curiosity!

Hedonism is greedy. It finds stable states with known rewards and exploits them.

Curiosity is anti greedy. It is interested in novel situations and complex games, not simplex known ones

It may engage in greediness but the exploration of greediness is the reward, not the actual pleasure in itself

—

We also talked about playing the status games and how you want a game that isn’t exploitable. Exploitable means you figure out a shortcut and max that instead of simply playing the game honestly

I argued that the game of likability is not exploitable. Smart ppl see through fake people and so the only way to win is through authenticity, which in itself is some kind of abandonment of the game. My friend thought that you can basically figure out “tricks” and push the right buttons in people to generate likability

Ideas are still messy but was riveting convo. Thank you RA!