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Nothing in nature (with the possible exception of faces) comes within an order of magnitude to the "experience density"

I got one of the first digital cameras of anyone that I knew. It was early enough that people were kind of shocked to see it.

One of the things that I noticed very early on is that JPG files that were generated from pictures outside were significantly larger than JPG files that were generated from pictures inside. At the time I took this to mean that the outdoor pictures were much less compressible because the level of detail in the natural world is much larger than anything indoors. It's a world of subtle details that we literally evolved to sense.

I just don't think looking at pictures on a screen can compare to the experience of physically going to places.

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Physical world may be a fractal of complexity, and nature doubly so, but one of the thing a human brain is good at - and arguably one of its most important function - is filtering all that out.

This is the reason I chose to write "experience density" and not "complexity" in my previous comment. A tree may be infinitely complex, and the first tree you see is profoundly interesting. But the tenth tree you see is just a tree. Soon after, you don't even notice them anymore, except in situations when you have a reason to care, or you see a tree that is very different from all the trees you usually see.

You're correct on the JPG size difference between indoor and outdoor shots. But just because something is too complex to compress well, doesn't mean it's interesting.

I understand what you are seeing and can see your point.

I think it brings up another point though. Does interesting have intrinsic value?

I believe the 20th century was a time period where the western world had to learn to live in a world with infinite sugar, fat and salt. Our nature is to gorge on these naturally rare resources when we find them.

I believe the 21st century will force humans to live in a world of infinite information. Again, our nature is to gorge ourselves on things we find interesting. Is watching YouTube videos you’re interested in any better than eating sugar? Time will tell but my initial reaction is that it is just as unhealthy.

For example, I love history. YouTube will happily feed me an infinite array of little factoids about history. I’ve seen so many that I will then see the same one come up on my feed again and think, “ooh that sounds interesting” and then I remember watching it previously and can’t remember a single thing about it. Was it really that interesting then? Or was I just wasting time mindlessly binge watching videos?

Nah, I don't think "interesting" has intrinsic value. The kind of "interesting" / "surprising" quality that I claim smartphones deliver better than anything in natural world, is a kind of cognitive equivalent to sugar. For the most of the history of our species, sugar was a good proxy for "nutritious", and in the same way, sensory input being interesting/surprising was a good proxy for "important for survival". Today, both sugar and interesting experiences are superstimuli - they tend to be found in most abundance in things of little value.

You are correct. Indoors have areas of solid color and near constant intensity, which compress very well in a wavelet basis.

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