Hacker News Reader

Comment by mbostleman | Hacker News Reader

This is similar to Type 2 fun that is part of the popular "Fun Scale" (https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale) idea in backcountry activities: Type 1 fun is an activity that is enjoyable while it is happening (eating, drinking, sex, etc.). Type 2 fun is not only not fun while it happens, it's miserable (freezing all night in a tent, being hungry for days on end, fearing for you life, etc.) - but in retrospect the experience creates a great deal of happiness, satisfaction, and a desire to do it again.

View on HN

This is something brought up in Buddhism as change of state. Basically happiness spawns from the change state: going from normal to better state brings happiness. Same applies for going from a down state back to normal. In this case from doing something miserable back to normal. This is important because suffering follows the same logic and Buddhism emphasizes on recognizing these change of states. This helped explain the emptiness or sadness I often feel after a big reunion with family members, a big party, doing something exciting, etc. I think it also helps explain why people chasing after the constant highs will never attain the happiness they're looking for since after staying high for a period of time, it'll become the new norm.

The dopamine system is a harsh mistress - she doles out based on measured differences in states, and not based on any intrinsic absolute value of the state itself - although evolution sets her priors.

Ah the backpacking in India, so much Type II. The horrible smell of the cities in the heat, pushy cab drivers, hard negotiations with shop owners, the noise, the constant sweat. Basically full time continuous attack on all senses. Travelling in fetal position on tiny bus seats for 12 hours with 1 short break. Or on rooftop for many hours, seeing burned buses and cars on the side of the road. The list is endless.

How did I survive that? When can I come back to it?

I’ve always considered the existence of “Type 2 fun” as a bug in our brain hardware: it’s the same mechanism that makes your brain believe that experiences like “playing a slot machine for hours with a negative rate-of-return (both average and total)”, or “taking a drug that you’ve long grown habituated to and don’t experience a high from any more”, were still rewarding-enough experiences to reinforce their addictive potential.

There's the reverse side too. Many experiences are unpleasant but I'd consider important for people to "enjoy". I don't have kids, but I think raising kids is a good example? No the direct experiences of being awake 24/7 picking up poop isn't fun, but the overall experience is what people are after?

IMHO people are often (not always) after specific things that having raised kids provides—posterity, people who will take care of you when you’re old, etc.—and are actually not interested in any aspect of the experience of actually raising them.

For people with such perspectives, I would say that what they experience is less like “something that was no fun in any part but still fun as a whole”, but rather “an input of a non-fun activity that is expected to pay out in happiness down the line”—in other words, the same kind of experience that working at a job to earn money is.

As such, people (for whom this calculus works out) don’t actually have to be irrationally drawn to having kids by addictive brain signals. They have perfectly rational reasons to do so!

I think in many ways, you have just describe most jobs.

Yes. It is often likened to short term memory loss too. The general idea of the activity seemed like it would be fun prior to doing it. Then after doing it when it was actually horrible, you still have the same feeling about its potential fun that you had in the beginning, but you fail to modify it with the pain of the actual experience - as if you forgot already.

> I’ve always considered the existence of “Type 2 fun” as a bug in our brain hardware

Not the way I see it. Adversity followed by salvation gives you confidence that you can overcome future challenges.

Interesting point of view but it seems like the opposite to me. The reason we remember and recollect these "type 2 fun" events is that they generally did not go as expected. When you go to the beach, swim, have a beer and go out to dinner, etc., the day was enjoyable but also went exactly as planned. In 5 years, you are unlikely to remember any details of this day. If you had the same plan on an unusually warm day in November and then the weather changed on a dime and starting hailing, you will definitely remember that in 5 years and maybe longer. It also is a lesson that you should remember, that going to the beach in late fall might go badly.

This argument doesn't work if you believe that not everything has to be type 1 fun- that is, we don't always need to be doing things that are pleasurable in the moment in order to be "happy".

For example, learning a skill to an advanced degree. Moment by moment it's not type 1 fun, but as you progress and look back, you realize that you've grown and improved. It -does- make me happy to see how far I've progressed in the hobbies/studying that I've invested a lot of time in. Conversely, seeing how much time I wasted doing "type 1" things all the time a few years ago makes me somewhat sad.

Consistently playing the slots [highly engineered products designed to be addictive] has to do with addiction and dopamine rushes when you get a hit. I wouldn't categorize that as the same as doing things like hiking or whatnot.

What's the line in Apcolypse Now?

"When I was here, I wanted to be there, when I was there all I could think of was getting back into the jungle."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com