✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

(Fantasy) -> (Planning): A Core Mental Move For Agentic Humans? — LessWrong

lesswrong.com · 2,374 words · saved by 1 readers

Back when I was young, I watched the movie Atlantis, and then spent a while thinking through how to build an actual city- or continent-sized underwater dome. What materials would be required? How much would it cost? How would light and heating/cooling work? Etc. A similar example: I watched the Harry Potter movies, and then spent a while thinking about how to build a quidditch field with flying broomsticks kept aloft via magnetic levitation. Or a golden snitch capable of flying around my room; that one progressed to the point of fiddling with physical prototypes (which did not work, to be clear; I was a kid, I did not have any serious engineering knowledge yet, and I did not understand just how far beyond my knowledge-at-the-time such a project was). Both of these examples show a similar mental move: (encounter a fantasy) -> (figure out how to bring that fantasy into reality). It’s fun, trying to work out the key steps and details to make the fantastic real. Even if it often fails. To

x (Fantasy) -> (Planning): A Core Mental Move For Agentic Humans? — LessWrong Rationality Frontpage 70 (Fantasy) -> (Planning): A Core Mental Move For Agentic Humans? by johnswentworth 14th Nov 2025 2 min read 6 70 So there’s this thing where… Back when I was young, I watched the movie Atlantis, and then spent a while thinking through how to build an actual city- or continent-sized underwater dome. What materials would be required? How much would it cost? How would light and heating/cooling work? Etc. A similar example: I watched the Harry Potter movies, and then spent a while thinking about h

Explore this link on the map →

related reading