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Does hedonic adaptation mean that once we’ve solved all the harms, we will rebaseline our harm-threshold and start suffering just as much from the micro-harms,
by jl6 5y ago
Does hedonic adaptation mean that once we’ve solved all the harms, we will rebaseline our harm-threshold and start suffering just as much from the micro-harms, and then once we’ve solved all those, we will be equally harmed by the nano-harms? Is the endgame a hyper-coddled, neutralized, padded cell existence?
Equivalently, does it mean that if we expose ourselves to macro-harms, we will be immunized against harms lower down the scale? Is the endgame a Spartan, ultra-violent survival of the toughest?
Or is there a point in the middle where the right amount of harm is tolerated, or even encouraged? How will we know when we have reached that point?
- austincheney 5y ago> How will we know when we have reached that point? I suspect it will occur when people stop parenting each other and when people stop deliberately concerning themselves with the disagreeable opinions of others (negative attention seeking).
- crateless 5y agoInteresting point. I think it's something of a "dialectical" process. In periods of peace, micro-harms become important, in periods of war etc. the micro-harms lose priority. So I don't think there is an endgame, it's probably more of a "what context are we in right now?"
- option_greek 5y agoInteresting points. Many eastern philosophies assert that the experiences are purely at the level of mind. As per them, so long as the mind can segregate experiences as desirable and undesirable, it will continue to crave the desirable ones and reject undesirable ones. If all the recent experiences are desirable, then there will be further segregation within the desirable ones till the undesirable bucket is again full (and vice versa). This gels well with anecdotal experiences of craving for something like financial independence only to feel once some one gets it that it is either not sufficient or craving for the opposite happens. So if we go by these theories, the center will never be reached. The pendulum shall just swing-by from one end to the other with the middle being really short lived.
- idontwantthis 5y agoThe answer to the second question is definitely no. Violence victims are definitely not better adjusted They get PTSD and can’t handle much smaller harms.
- blueflow 5y agoI know people who fit your description, and i know people who "hardened up" and unlearned to care. It is probably another factor.
- redmaverick 5y agoIt's kind of unpredictable. David Goggins suffered terrible violence and it made him tougher to handle smaller harms. On the other hand there are people who never recover and are never the same again.
- jgalt212 5y agoIt's like after St. George killed that dragon, he roamed the earth looking for other noble challenges to take on. Of course, none of them were in any way close to his original great feat.
- burade 5y agoIf you expose yourself to macro-harms... you tend to... die.
- hn8788 5y ago> Equivalently, does it mean that if we expose ourselves to macro-harms, we will be immunized against harms lower down the scale? For the most part, yes, it's called building resilience[1]. The hard part is that people view adversity relative to their own experiences, and don't want to be told that they need to "suck it up" when their ride is a few minutes late, or the waiter got their meal wrong. A coddled person will truly believe that their minor inconveniences are very difficult events, and there isn't a way to force them to build resilience, so they might end up being coddled even more just so they'll be quite. [1]https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience