In reply to Robin Montaigne:
> I guess there are cases where something intrinsic to the struggle that’s involved in the pursuit of certain goals can affect our behaviour. If we want to summit a particular mountain, for e.g., the potential for experiencing “flow” (or “being in the zone”) on routes that offer the right amount of resistance could motivate us to reject those we’d find relatively easy, in favour of a more challenging one – but not one so challenging that we’d fail to achieve our goal of summiting.
I think flow is a positive mental state, but from introspection it don't think it on its own it accounts well for my motivation to climb. I can jibber up a route in a state of total self-doubt and abject terror, take half the day over it, and not encounter a single moment of flow. But if it's a route that means something to me in terms of character, difficulty, reputation (i.e. what other people will think of me when I tell them, or what I think they'll think, I'm half-ashamed to admit), etc, then in my memory I'll transform that experience into one of pride and retrospective euphoria. It's this retrospective euphoria ("type 2 fun") that can be the motivator rather than seeking out the essentially terrible experience for its own sake. Shitting yourself, desperately sweating off crap holds too high above your gear that you've just lost your confidence in is a bad experience, but it gives context to the "pleasure" that comes later, and that the "pleasure" can't really exist without. This is the problem with Experience Machine...
> Although flow is a positive mental state, I’m not sure the hedonist would equate it with “pleasure”, as they see struggle as merely instrumental, at best; if something promised enough pleasure to more than offset the anticipated “pain”, they’d choose it in spite of the struggle involved, not because of it. I suspect they’d rather be helicoptered* to the summit
I don't think being helicoptered to the summit is a useful metaphor. The experience of climbing isn't characterised by pain and suffering leading to a euphoric rush as you summit/top out. That's just not how it is. The real euphoria on a trad route might be latching a jug that ends the first hard section, or it might be the buzz of committing to a spectacular steep traverse with no feet and mind-reeling exposure but that isn't actually very hard once you get going. It can be about the journey, even just bits of it, or it can be about the retrospective pleasure, but it's all not about the satisfaction of topping out.
I would consider myself a hedonist, but I appreciate that delayed gratification is the key to accessing the higher pleasures. Even something "easy" like enjoying listening to music is better if you put some effort in and try challenging stuff, or stuff that takes many listens to appreciate. I was watching a tragic film the other day, and it wasn't exactly "pleasure" but it made me think of this idea of hedonism and how that might fit in. I didn't come to any conclusion!
> we might choose real life over the EM if we value things in addition to inner experience:
I don't think anything meaningful exists that is not part of (inner) experience. Being a certain sort of person *is* just a series of thoughts and emotions which appear in the contents of inner experience. I don't like Nozick's reasons for not plugging in, they don't make sense to me. The whole thought experiment falls flat for me: there is no comparable experience of topping out on a route without it including the memories of the desire to climb the route, the planning, anticipation, setting off, the crux, the wobbling, the sweating and yelping etc. And if you get the memories of all of that as part of the deal, then it's just indistinguishable from actually doing it. It's either identical to the true experience and you don't know it's simulated, or it isn't and is therefore obviously fake and unsatisfying.
> But perhaps that reflects the biases – in our current, unplugged state – discussed in the podcast?
> *This account of Nietzsche’s view on suffering & “happiness” uses the helicoptering vs. climbing example, also mentioned by Nigel Warburton in the podcast:
I'll check that out, ta!
Post edited at 22:15
