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Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill
- bndr 4y agoShameless plug, I wrote an article recently on how the hedonic treadmill affects development culture [1]. In my opinion, good approach to avoiding the hedonic treadmill is to think in “processes” rather than “goals.” If you achieve some goal, you get back to the equilibrium and get used to it. But if you’re on a journey, there’s nothing to adapt to as every day is a journey and brings something new. So it's like smaller pendulum swings every day instead of big ones every few months. Nonetheless, I like the ideas proposed in this article and think they also are quite effective. [1] https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/hedonic-treadmill/ https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/hedonic-treadmill/
- hinkley 4y agoSome of us say if you aren’t embarrassed by code you wrote 18 months ago that you aren’t learning fast enough. I think people who feel that way would in general agree that we should be constantly improving, not looking for status quo. If the cost of maintaining your code grows logarithmically - and many projects do worse than this - then you have to constantly be finding ways to go faster just to keep getting the same amount of new logic into the system. This is something sometimes lost on people fixated on story points. They don’t notice that story points three years ago were “worth” more than story points today. Or maybe they do but they can’t prove it or even really name it. That would explain some of the friction I sometimes see with management.
- LesZedCB 4y agoI would prefer not to.
- oneaaronofmany 4y ago
- cantSpellSober 4y agoIf you get degenerative chronic illness are you eventually just as happy as you were before it? No, we figured this out in the 70s. Why is "Hedonic Treadmill" forced into blogspam titles like these? Was there a TED Talk recently? > Variators are little modulations that keep experiences fresh So...variety? Mind blown.
- niek_pas 4y ago> If you get degenerative chronic illness are you eventually just as happy as you were before it? No, we figured this out in the 70s. No, but that's also not what the HT hypothesis says. The treadmill pushes you back, not forward.
- cantSpellSober 4y agoFalse, it's a tendency to return to a stable level of happiness despite positive or negative events. This doesn't happen if you get degenerative chronic illness (and it was debunked 50 years ago).
- hinkley 4y agoHedonic treadmill had been in a couple of threads last week. I suspect a mix of people being primed and noticing other articles on it and posting them here, with a dash of karma farming. And to the extent that such clusters are real or imagined, possibly a but of observer bias on my part. If the latter, then just a coincidence.
- human_person 4y agoMy understanding is happiness will revert to the baseline if you have a set loss such as going blind or losing a limb. But a degenerative illness implies continued increasing loss in which case you would not have a chance to get used to it and revert because things will just keep getting worse. I’m curious what are you saying we figured out in the 70s?
- cantSpellSober 4y ago
- akimball 4y agoSubtitle: The case for wire-heading.
- darod 4y ago"Commercial breaks––people actually enjoy TV more with commercials." I've never enjoyed being disrupted by commercials nor has anyone else. This is why Tivo became so popular
- johnchristopher 4y agohttps://hbr.org/2010/10/defend-your-research-commercials-make-us-like-tv-more https://hbr.org/2010/10/defend-your-research-commercials-mak... > The study: Leif Nelson, in collaboration with Tom Meyvis of New York University’s Stern School and Jeff Galak of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School, showed subjects three kinds of TV shows: Taxi episodes, nature documentaries, and Bollywood programs. Some watched the shows with commercials, some without. Subjects who watched TV with commercials reported greater enjoyment—and were willing to pay more for DVD collections of shows by the same director—than subjects who watched without interruptions. Maybe the show is good enough that people want to watch it without interruptions but the show is not good enough that people who have watched it would pay to rewatch ?
- fartcannon 4y agoThis is probably rude, but maybe people who are happy to sit through commercials are more capable of enjoying the extremely middling (I'm being generous here) quality of most TV? So people who dislike commercials also dislike the kind of shows that are on TV and thus aren't willing to watch more or pay for more.
- Terretta 4y agoPlausible explanations include (a) the study is flawed, (b) some TV is so bad the commercials are a relief, or (c) the cohort that enjoys TV with ads more are the nascent idiocracy. Did those willing to pay more for the DVDs want the ads on the DVD? Or pay more to get without ads?
- petercooper 4y agoThe article says the reason. A pleasurable activity being interrupted and restarted is more pleasurable due to the resumption. This makes a lot of sense to me, because I certainly enjoy a lie in more if I wake up and then go back to sleep than if I merely woke up at the later time. I think it's a variant of the old "nothing feels good if nothing feels bad to compare it with" chestnut. You could probably replace the commercials with almost anything mildly inconvenient.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago> That afternoon when someone is staying with you and they go see another friend who lives in the same city and you go to work or stay home and do laundry or whatever Great article, but this is a ridiculously hard to parse sentence with the number of `ands` and `ors`.
- layer8 4y agoTLDR: Turn it into a hedonic rollercoaster.
- xnx 4y agoGive up on desire (including the desire to be free from desire) and you will truly be free.
- eternityforest 4y agoAnother important thing is context. Would you enjoy a pizza you found on the floor, or would you be imagining that it probably fell on a sidewalk loogie and has coronavirus on it? Games used to have LAN parties. People used to watch stuff together more. Many activities had annoying prep work that could be considered like grinding in a game, but in real life. Context makes or breaks entertainment.
- Mikejames 4y agojust breathe
- p1esk 4y agoPretty sure I’d be happier if I didn’t have to work for a living.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gtirloni 4y agoI really like to work and the area I've chosen. What makes it annoying is that I have to work on what upper management thinks is important at any given time. They want me to design a high level software architecture now but I want to code. Next week they want me to code but I want to design. It very rarely aligns. If ever. That annoys me and probably causes management a great deal of anxiety when I go off path. It feels so childish of me. I'm looking for soutions to hack this situation like the hedonic threadmill, in case anyone has suggestions.
- danielheath 4y agoIt sounds like you don't have the autonomy you think you should - which often comes from the responsibilities being misaligned (presumably management are responsible for some delivery dates which leads them to feel they should be telling you what to work on).
- ricardobayes 4y agoStart a startup company
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> It feels so childish of me. It is. "Capitalism is for children" said Adam Phillips [1] You cannot be a fully fledged adult, a self-determined being, under conditions of wage slavery. Education is set up not to allow graceful separation into adulthood, as most cultures have historically done, but to transfer dependency to a new set of masters. Late capitalism in particular, with its intrusive lack of boundaries, neurotic management, measurement, bureaucracy and surveillance, or any similar state-controlled apparatus such as in China, is, as that line in "The Matrix" goes - a prison for your mind. Philosophers criticised the Church (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) as "patently infantile family values" to keep people in subjugation. We have largely overthrown that aspect of patriarchal religion only to replace it with a Corporate equivalent. > I'm looking for solutions to hack this How did occidental culture dethrone the Church? It didn't happen in one day, when everyone decided to live a secular life. For centuries individuals stood up, called themselves "atheists" and refused to join in the rituals. They were punished and suffered pain and ostracism. The problem is, for the aspiring Hedonist, entering into a world of pain to champion a principle that people should have pleasurable lives, won't fly for any but the most unselfish and far sighted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Phillips_(psychologist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Phillips_(psychologist)
- Mikejames 4y agoI like these hacks, it’s also a mindset that needs to be at the forefront of all of this, why not eudaemonia over hedonism? Ive been interested recently around eudaemonia, Whilst i’m familiar with some of its stoic principles im just barely scratching the surface, this is just my take, but there’s noticeable patterns within literature in subjects such as minimalism, buddhism and stoicism. All pointing towards eudaemonia over hedonism. Sam Harris in his Waking Up Book / App covers this hedonic treadmill well too we don’t embrace the impermanence of things we’re programmed in the western world to be constantly chasing desire, these hacks build gratitude, which is a trait in eudaemonia, thanks for sharing
- kalimanzaro 4y agoA hackergroup inspired by Eudaimonism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaemons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaemons
- binbag 4y agoCoder philosophy drivel has truly ascended to the level of high art.
- benj111 4y ago'coder philosophy'? It's just awareness of yourself. If you know that if you have one glass of wine, that leads to a 3 day bender, then you can do something to stop the cycle. If you mindlessly consume to be happier, this is a tool to stop the cycle.
- Ygg2 4y agohttps://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U
- binbag 4y agoHaha, exactly
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- apostate 4y agoThe author has a PhD in psychology, fwiw.
- adamsmith143 4y agoOf all the appeals to authority, this has to be among the weakest.
- apostate 4y agoI was not highlighting the author's background to appeal to authority. I was pointing out that what OP dismissed as "coder philosophy drivel" (likely from skimming the title and nothing else) was written by someone who has nothing to do with that field. In fact, by doing that, OP made an anti-appeal-to-authority. You seem to be interested in logical fallacies.. could you help me out and tell me if that one has a specific name?
- benj111 4y agoAwareness of the hedonic treadmill meshes quite well with my 'frugal' Yorkshire tendencies. A favourite on HN seems to be coffee, and spending ever more on 'good' coffee. I mainly just drink instant coffee, filter coffee for the weekend. I still get my 'good' coffee and I appreciate it. Same goes for wine and chocolate. It's also led me away from expensive experiences to unique/different experiences. It's also helpful for informing new purchases. Do I need the latest car with all the bells and whistles or can I just stay a generation behind and be excited with a new car with electric windows or whatever.
- vangelis 4y agoI think there's a triple point of quality-time-cost for products like that. Coffee, wine, and chocolate especially are subject to diminishing returns. Price is ~usually~ an indicator of quality, but there's an element of your time (research) in finding the best for the price stuff.
- ThePadawan 4y agoI'm right there with you! I just recently bought some Ersatz coffee and thought to myself "Well, what sounds more like a unique experience. Coffee, or a blend of roasted chicory, wheat, barley, figs and acorns?" This stuff is pretty great, and regardless of how much it resembles coffee (which it does to a surprising extent), this was a really solid purchase.
- benj111 4y agoAnd if you don't like it, you enjoy the real coffee all the more when you go back to it!
- laserlight 4y agoThe idea of hacking the hedonic treadmill misses one important point: the mind adapts to these hacks as well. And now you are looking for more hacks.
- Applejinx 4y agoOr you can just settle for being sad and frustrated knowing that there will come another day and it'll be better. Guess that's stepping off the treadmill. I'm interested in stoic philosophy as opposed to epicurian philosophy, so all this talk of the hedonic treadmill seems super weird to me. :)
- alach11 4y agoMaybe to break the treadmill we need to subject ourselves to torture once per month to reset our baseline?
- Mikejames 4y agoexactly, more more more!
- nextos 4y agoRelatively, right? It's like adding tons of variation and cycles in training (i.e. periodization). Done correctly, you can keep improving season after season.
- laserlight 4y agoYes. On the one hand the analogy is useful. Just like how physical training makes one physically fit, hedonic hacks might make one hedonically fit. On the other hand, while people might understand and accept that there are genetic limits that they cannot pass beyond, it's never the case for hedonic pleasure. Hedonic adaptation drives one to always look for more.
- RandomLensman 4y agoNot directly on the treadmill, but removing things that regularly create unhappiness really creates lasting uplift. There is no adjustment that brings back proper misery again.
- hinkley 4y agoI have noticed that sometimes if you fix half a problem, other people will suddenly care and want to fix it the rest of the way. I have been known to “set the table” so it’s easier to finish something I’ve started, so I can come back to them later, or move on to something else if someone else finds the time before I can get back to it. Sometimes I have too many irons in the fire and these little enticements help get things done that I don’t have time and energy to do properly.
- trellad 4y agoAnna Lembke’s “Dopamine Nation” has a lot of interesting takes on the subject. One takeaway I got is that dopamine seeks a balance. Opting for pleasure seeking often ends up getting experienced as pain. An example of that is drug tolerance. Oddly, the reverse is also true: seeking pain can often lead to an experience of pleasure. The invigorated feeling after a cold shower, or how hard exercise leads to highs. She is a great podcast guest, too. Her approach - that the people with the strongest addictions can tell us a lot about how we seek pleasure - has a lot of depth to it.
- chownie 4y agoAre exercise highs real? Do all people experience them or is it a genetic niche? I've tried a bunch of different exercise methods. Gone running, swimming, weightlifting etc and I've never experienced anything close to a high afterward. I'll be tired, sometimes I'll feel proud of breaking a personal record but there's never any physical positive sensation or euphoria to me that would resemble the "runners high" that people often refer to. I think I'd exercise much more consistently if there were any biological feedback mechanism to make me want to rather than doing it the way I do, like it's a chore. The closest thing I can compare would get the transformation of anxiety into excitement from getting a piercing but even that's super short lasting, maybe five to fifteen minutes of shaky internal excitement followed by a quick regression to baseline.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoI swear it must be a unique to the individual. I've been running for a few years now and have completed a few half marathons (still working to get to the full) and I have never once felt any sort of "high".
- Filligree 4y ago> Are exercise highs real? Do all people experience them or is it a genetic niche? They're real, but (probably, usually) not literal. Exercise just leaves me feeling good, all over. If you've had the feeling, you'll know what I mean. Some people don't seem to get it at all. And some probably do experience a literal high; if the dial can be dialed all the way down, I'm sure it can go to 11 as well. It's unfortunate if you're in the first group, of course. I don't get it very strongly myself, but I compensate by making the exercise itself enjoyable. Swimming is boring. Spend a few hours hiking across a mountain ridge -- that's anything but boring. Still tiring, but the views are worth it, and it's a great place for lunch.
- andybak 4y ago> flight of beer First time I've ever heard it called that - and I've had several.
- spread_love 4y agoWine flights, cheese flights, I see it lots of places. I had a "bacon flight" once, it might be getting overused.
- gundmc 4y agoPretty standard across the US for 3-6 small sized tasters from my experience.
- harvie 4y agoBut you have to drink fast, otherwise the last beer gets warm and looses foam before you drink the other beers. Beer without foam (or worse, the warm beer) might be acceptable in some countries, but it's just not what we do here in Czech republic.
- b3lvedere 4y ago"Commercial breaks––people actually enjoy TV more with commercials". Maybe most people, but i hate forced commercials. I rather pause the video, do something else for a while and resume the video. "Setpiece escape room experiences, like climbing into a coffin " I have been in a real coffin a few hours once for a halloween fright night. Pretty comfy things. Felt quite relaxed.
- antman 4y agoI clicked the link, took the first name in the publication, looked him up and is a professor in business and marketing. The things a professor of marketing needs to publish to thrive professionally these days seems to have become surreal.
- xelxebar 4y ago> Maybe most people, but i... You are Most People: > Though people say they prefer to watch television without ads, they sometimes enjoy programs that have commercial interruptions more. The surprising claim isn't that most people say they enjoy commercials, it's that TV programs with commercial interruptions tend to correlate with people reporting higher enjoyment of the TV program despite claiming that the would prefer less commercials.
- staticman2 4y ago"TV programs with commercial interruptions tend to correlate with people reporting higher enjoyment of the TV program" ... when watching an arbitrary TV show picked by the person doing the study. If you want to start assuming that a TV show you've chosen to watch will be more enjoyable with commercials go ahead, but that wasn't the way the study was done.
- b3lvedere 4y agoI can understand that process. Still i like personal control of my breaks :)
- detaro 4y agoOf course, TV programs with higher enjoyment are also the ones that selling ads on is more profitable, and thus are the ones with frequent-ish commercial breaks?
- antman 4y agoOh yes Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. This article kind of mixes different definitions of happiness. There’s the constitutional reference which comes from ancient greek roman philosophy and its origin is Aristotelian Happiness as “Evdemonia” in Aristotelian scripts (Eudemonia in wikipedia) which more accurately translates as having “good demons” with you, which can be interpreted as feeling content/lucky for what you have. Happiness as “Joyfulness” which is smily face marketing and instant gratification and hedonistic stuff aka buying the new iphone each year and getting bored at it and buying afterwards the next one because under a microscope the photo of the dark side of the moon looks better, when somebody else takes it. So if one needs to repeat escalate: hedonism usually exploited by marketing, if you need to pay probably a facade of happiness and unfulfilling. Hedonism is nice to have tho. If one is feeling lucky for his life and future: happiness aka lucky for parameters of ones life that would be deemed important 300 years ago and should be important in 300 years, conative with a sense of purpose. usually exploited by social and political systems (e.g.to be happy you need good health, very expensive if politics fights life) happiness is a must have This article conflates one definition of happiness to the other while only discussing affective optimisation of hedonism.
- Comevius 4y agoWe don't buy the next iPhone because it has a better camera, but because it makes us feel not being left behind. I routinely see people who can't afford one splurging on the newest iPhone and AirPods. People even wear fake AirPods. Radiohead has an entire album about how fake and ultimately unfulfilling this is, but the problem is that we live in a society, and nobody wants to be an outlier. I may like the sound quality of my old earphones, but I still feel a tingle of shame when everyone else is sporting AirPods. We are evolved to follow norms, those who don't were ostracised from the community with dire consequences. This kind of fake happiness is thus an advantage.
- antman 4y agoWe don’t disagree! I did not say we buy the new thing because it has a better camera experience, I said we are buying it because we are told others are having a better camera experience which we will not witness anyway
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoThe ultimate hack is weaning yourself off the pull of the hedonic treadmill itself. And the best way I’ve found for that is to optimize for meaning. Of course, meaning is a difficult goal that is individual and prone to change. However, it is also a lot more robust than the desires generated by the treadmill. Another way to think about it is learning to practice being content where you are (however imperfect) and sinking your attention into things that engage you and leave you feeling energized. The treadmill will always be in the back of your mind, but it isn’t fit to drive.
- adamsmith143 4y agoBut a Red Ferrari 488 gives me lots of meaning...
- rfergie 4y agoDon't you just end up on a "meaning treadmill" instead?
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoIME, meaning is far more satiating than happiness simply because it is able to offset more BS than being happy will. More to your question: what happens is your tolerance for meaninglessness decreases, which has good and bad side effects.
- slfnflctd 4y ago> your tolerance for meaninglessness decreases I think part of what keeps me locked on to the hedonistic treadmill is that a lot of other people (including my partner) don't like who I am when I'm trying to stay off it. I tend to get more intense about a lot of things most folks don't care about. It's funny, out of my whole family & friend circle I'm probably doing the most damage to myself via self medication, but when I try to get serious about things that matter and take a break from intoxicants, I end up doing just as much damage or more by putting my relationships through pointless trials of fire. But I know what you mean about meaning. When it's good, it's really good and worth every bit of seeking. It's unfortunate there are so many pitfalls to dodge for so many of us.
- thenerdhead 4y agoI think you can simplify this. Consider your wants and needs. Most of us get stuck in our wants. We want to get a promotion, we want a nice car, we want a perfect family vacation. But do we need any of those? Not necessarily. We get stuck on the treadmill by not knowing the difference of our wants and needs. When you realize you don’t need the things you want, you focus more on the things you need. Introspection in my opinion helps you find your inner happiness in discerning your needs from wants. This is why many ancient philosophers believed you can be plenty happy with “enough”.
- balfirevic 4y agoCan you give some examples of needs? The obvious ones are food, water, shelter and (for most people) companionship. Any others?
- thenerdhead 4y agoMaslow's hierarchy of needs to start, but to extend on more modern meaning, your psychological needs are quite important given most people have their basic needs met. There's a popular self-determination theory to explain this further. i.e. Autonomy, competence, relatedness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory One of the better books on this topic is "Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization" by Scott Barry Kaufman Here's a piece I wrote based on that book: Think of your life as a sailboat. The hull protects us from the waves and keeps us safe. The sail allows us to explore and adapt to our environment. However, to get anywhere, we must open our sail to the world. Without that, we're stuck in harbor. As we set out in the world in the many different directions we each may take in life. We are all sailing into the unknown of the sea together. So while a ship in harbor is safe, that's not what ships are built for. Even though you're alone in your boat, it's nice to see other lights along the way.
- scld 4y agoBecause that line about preferring commercials completely rang false to me, I followed the link....it's from 2010... "You still haven’t accounted for the popularity of, say,The Sopranos and all the subscription-channel programs. Don’t we pay to get those shows without commercials? Contemporary shows like The Sopranos might be interrupting themselves. Remember, it’s not the commercial that increases the enjoyment, it’s the interruption. These shows often run six or more parallel plots and constantly shuffle between them. One plot interrupts another." ...so, that entire concept has, IMO, been disproven by the rise of streaming services.
- user00012-ab 4y agoI stopped reading the article at that point; figuring the rest of the article was also made up by gpt3.
- twobitshifter 4y agoI don’t think I like commercials either, but the enforced pacing of the shows with commercials is something that I miss when I rewatch shows built for commercials on streaming services. You’ll come up against a cliffhanger cut and then a second later it’s resolved because there’s no commercial break.
- mewse-hn 4y agoI recently rewatched the entirety of DS9 on canadian netflix and I don't think I'm under any illusion that the bullshit cliffhangers they'd put before a commercial break actually added to the show
- HEI-Points 4y agoWhy do you miss that? They had to mangle the plot to end on a different cliffhanger every 10 minutes.