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You don’t feel the amount of new things you see slows down considerably as you grow older?

Not OP but I don’t feel this way at all.

My oldest son is starting college next year. That alone has been a learning experience! I coach his robotics team, that has been tremendously new experiences.

I’ve gotten three cloud certifications in the past year. I have a huge list of things I want to learn about - assembly language on Linux, FPGAs and about 20 other things.

I could spend 10,000 lifetimes and not scratch the surface of what this world has to offer.

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I don't see how this is an adequate counterexample to OP's experience. The novel things you mention have happened to you take are rarer occurrences than a 3 year old experiencing basic physics.

Despite the pleas in responses to continue to explore and experience new things, it seems to me that the experience of being surprised at new things becomes rarer as one ages, with exploration yielding diminishing returns with respect solely to that experience.

I think maybe it’s easier to get stuck in a rut, go on autopilot, rely on what you know and then end up feeling like there’s no novelty in the world any more as you get older and comfortable.

Maybe you can fall so deeply into it that you can’t even tell you’re in a rut any more and just think that that’s how the world is, which is a puzzling perspective to those outside of the rut because the complexity and novelty of the world really is literally everywhere.

Not that endless novelty seeking is the be all end all, but it’s there if you want it.

For me I have found that traveling helps break that "tunnel vision" which I occasionally find myself stuck in. And it's very hard to realize you're stuck in it until you break out of it. Traveling helps me realize that there's an entire world out there where people are not just living, but thriving. That always helps stir up my curiosity to dig deeper into things.

The novel things you mention have happened to you take are rarer occurrences than a 3 year old experiencing basic physics.

I can use the same example though! Seeing each of my children born left an immense imprint on me. Seeing them experience basic physics for the first time was as novel of an experience for me as experiencing it myself many years earlier.

There are infinite novel experiences awaiting you if you want to seek them.

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