Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

experimentalhistory.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 148 posts

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#51

Post by detaro »

xelxebar wrote: post #33
b3lvedere wrote: post #29

"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.

> 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 pr…

Of 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?

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#52

Post by andrei_says_ »

trellad wrote: post #20

Anna 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…

Any interviews or talks you can recommend where she covers the important points of her work?

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#53

Post by meken »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #46
p1esk wrote: post #2

Pretty sure I’d be happier if I didn’t have to work for a living.

I recommend doing a hardcore survival course. You’ll come back knowing 1. you don’t need a job (you do need an occupation…) and 2. why you appreciate modern life, while at the same time why modern life is a bit sad, taking us away from our true habitat.

What are some examples of occupation you have in mind?

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#54

Post by bigbillheck »

antman wrote: post #35

Oh 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…

> Happiness as “Evdemonia” in Aristotelian scripts

Since when would Aristotle have used the latin alphabet?

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#56

Post by scld »

Because 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.

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#57

Post by shaftoe »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #46
p1esk wrote: post #2

Pretty sure I’d be happier if I didn’t have to work for a living.

I recommend doing a hardcore survival course. You’ll come back knowing 1. you don’t need a job (you do need an occupation…) and 2. why you appreciate modern life, while at the same time why modern life is a bit sad, taking us away from our true habitat.

Can you recommend any specific hardcore survival courses for people not in military or similar roles?

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#58

Post by twobitshifter »

scld wrote: post #56

Because 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’…

I 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.

Re: Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill

#60

Post by lee »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #52
trellad wrote: post #20

Anna 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…

Any interviews or talks you can recommend where she covers the important points of her work?

Dr. Huberman had her on his podcast. She dives into a lot of her work.

https://hubermanlab.com/dr-anna-lembke-understanding-and-tre...

Post reply on HN