[phrenq]

I know Karpathy explicitly says that learning doesn’t have to be not fun either, but it reminds me of the book “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” by Raph Koster [0], which offers a counterpoint.

It’s been a while since I read it, but Koster essentially proposes that fun literally is learning at an evolutionary brain chemistry level. That the games we play as children prepare us, in a no consequence environment, for the problems and dangers that we’re going to face as adults. The thing that makes games “fun” is the solving of puzzles and mastery of problems, and we’re much better at learning when it’s fun.

[0] https://game-studies.fandom.com/wiki/A_Theory_of_Fun_for_Gam...

[davidivadavid]

I think the game design angle is the best here. What he's gesturing at, to me, is the concept of difficulty as encountered in games. You have to play at the highest level of difficulty you can tolerate without getting frustrated. If it's too easy, it's boring, and a sign you're not learning anything. If it's too difficult you give up. So it's not so much a binary thing as a matter of "right degree of difficulty"/balance.