I deliberately wander around outside in the cold before I come in and drink hot chocolate. (In this case, strong cold is preferable, for somewhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours before additional cold stops making the experience nicer).
I don’t deliberately keep my house freezing in the winter, but when I’m in control of the temperature (not often, with roommates), I don’t turn the heat on until it’s actually interfering with my ability to do work. I know people who keep it even colder and they learn to live with it. I’m not sure what’s actually optimal—it may very from person to person, but overall you probably aren’t actually benefiting yourself much if you keep your house in the 70s during winter
Part of the key is variation, though. I also deliberately went to a giant party in the desert. It turns out that it is really hard to have fun in the desert because learning to properly hydrate yourself is hard work. But this was an interesting experience of its own right and yes, it was extremely nice to shower when I got back.
It’s probably valuable to vary having at least one element of you life be extremely “low quality” by modern western standards, most of the time.
(nods) I sympathize with that reasoning. Two things about it make me suspicious, though.
The first is that it seems to elide the difference between choosing to experience cold when doing so is nice, and not having such a choice. it seems to me that this difference is incredibly important.
The second is its calibration against “modern” standards.
I suspect that if I lived a hundred years ago I would similarly be sympathetic to the idea that it’s valuable to have at least one element of my life be extremely low quality by “modern” standards, and if I’m alive a hundred years from now I will similarly be sympathetic to it.
Which leads me to suspect that what’s going on here has more to do with variety being a valuable part of constructing an optimal environment than it does with ordinariness.
Yes and no.
I deliberately wander around outside in the cold before I come in and drink hot chocolate. (In this case, strong cold is preferable, for somewhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours before additional cold stops making the experience nicer).
I don’t deliberately keep my house freezing in the winter, but when I’m in control of the temperature (not often, with roommates), I don’t turn the heat on until it’s actually interfering with my ability to do work. I know people who keep it even colder and they learn to live with it. I’m not sure what’s actually optimal—it may very from person to person, but overall you probably aren’t actually benefiting yourself much if you keep your house in the 70s during winter
Part of the key is variation, though. I also deliberately went to a giant party in the desert. It turns out that it is really hard to have fun in the desert because learning to properly hydrate yourself is hard work. But this was an interesting experience of its own right and yes, it was extremely nice to shower when I got back.
It’s probably valuable to vary having at least one element of you life be extremely “low quality” by modern western standards, most of the time.
(nods) I sympathize with that reasoning. Two things about it make me suspicious, though.
The first is that it seems to elide the difference between choosing to experience cold when doing so is nice, and not having such a choice. it seems to me that this difference is incredibly important.
The second is its calibration against “modern” standards.
I suspect that if I lived a hundred years ago I would similarly be sympathetic to the idea that it’s valuable to have at least one element of my life be extremely low quality by “modern” standards, and if I’m alive a hundred years from now I will similarly be sympathetic to it.
Which leads me to suspect that what’s going on here has more to do with variety being a valuable part of constructing an optimal environment than it does with ordinariness.