Always believed humour could be quantified

Jürgen Schmidhuber's Theory of Fun and Creativity

Jürgen Schmidhuber's theory of fun is intrinsically linked to creativity through the concept of compression progress. According to this theory, both fun and creativity are driven by the discovery or creation of novel patterns that allow for improved prediction or data compression.

Key Aspects of Schmidhuber's Theory

1. Intrinsic Motivation
The theory posits that agents (human or artificial) are intrinsically motivated to discover or create new patterns that were previously unknown or unpredictable.

2. Novelty and Surprise
Fun and creativity arise from encountering or generating data that is novel and surprising, yet still compressible in some way.

3. Learning Progress
The experience of fun is tied to the process of learning to better compress or predict new information, which is a fundamental aspect of creativity.

4. Algorithmic Principle
Schmidhuber argues that this mechanism is driven by a simple algorithmic principle that uses reinforcement learning to maximize internal joy for discovering or creating novel patterns.

5. Applications Across Domains
This theory aims to explain various creative behaviors, including scientific discovery, art, music, humor, and even skill acquisition. For example, in learning a new skill like juggling, the theory explains the sense of fun and achievement as the result of generating a novel sensory input sequence (observing oneself juggling) that becomes increasingly predictable as one improves.

Scientists and Artists: A Unified Framework

Schmidhuber's framework suggests that both scientists and artists are engaged in similar processes of creating new, compressible data:

• Scientists seek to discover new patterns in nature that can be described by concise theories or models.
• Artists strive to create works that offer novel, yet comprehensible experiences for observers.

This unified approach to creativity and fun provides a formal basis for understanding intrinsic motivation in both human and artificial intelligence contexts, bridging the gap between subjective experiences and computational principles.

Audio overview....https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/380963d2-7e9a-4da8-a557-7c526b404a13/audio

References

1. IEEE Creative Paper
2. Creativity Research
3. Reddit Discussion
4. Wikipedia: Creativity
5. YouTube Lecture
6. ACM Paper
7. Additional Lecture
8. Archive.org Recording