I’m skeptical that this is really about superstimuli per se, mostly based on the replacements you offer.
Meditation and exercise are very much addictive and often superstimuli themselves. Their (non-fun) benefits are questionable.
Also, I don’t see what purpose karezza serves. Do you mean to masturbate without orgasm, or to use it as a sex variant? The first seems to me like just replacing one fetish with another, and the other seems like a really bad idea for a replacement because it doesn’t supply the same thing as porn.
I’m also skeptical about the whole approach. I’ve experimented with longer abstinence from superstimuli myself, but I can’t say it did me any good. It didn’t change the need for stimulation, and so I just drifted from one “addiction” into another. I only made me miserable during the transition, but had no long-term effects. I’m way happier by embracing superstimuli. I now take care to have enough of them to limit the need for escalation.
Maybe I’m overly cynical here, but this seems to me more like a moralistic judgment (these stimuli are evil, but those are fine). It certainly was for me.
Maybe I’m overly cynical here, but this seems to me more like a moralistic judgment (these stimuli are evil, but those are fine). It certainly was for me.
Also, when you think about it, moralistic judgements are memes that evolved to deal with precisely the problem the author is talking about.
I generally take superstimuli to be things that command attention with reduced or no pay off relative to other activities. This as opposed to things that require attention and/or meet some need or goal. Obviously it’s a continuum rather than a hard distinction. Porn is an obvious example of a superstimuli. As is television, nutritionally suspect yet delicious food, etc. I don’t think either exercise or meditation are superstimuli. I feel bad on days I don’t exercise and exercise can be addictive in that sense but it still takes sustained effort to keep to an exercise routine.
Yes, I think the (physical and mental) health benefits for exercise and meditation are largely overrated, and can be achieved by a very limited practice, and so provide not nearly enough activity to replace a superstimulus. Going beyond that hits diminishing returns very quickly.
Plus it’s difficult to do them safely. Lots of exercise has risk of injuries, especially on the level that could compete with a superstimulus.
I also always cringe when people recommend meditation as a healthy alternative, especially because the kind of meditation they end up doing is a mixture of jhana practice and vipassana. Jhana has no plausible benefits besides being a basis for other techniques (and it’s fun and addictive, of course), and vipassana is deliberately designed to cause breakdowns, not stabilize people. Mindfulness ends up as vipassana lite, with the hope that the practitioner never gets too deep into it to cause problems.
Yes, I think the (physical and mental) health benefits for exercise and meditation are largely overrated, and can be achieved by a very limited practice, and so provide not nearly enough activity to replace a superstimulus. Going beyond that hits diminishing returns very quickly.
Food consumption is healthy to a point and taken beyond that has a point of not merely diminishing returns in terms of health and vitality but actually becomes detrimental.
So long as you have clearly defined goals and you utilize exercise and/or meditation as tools toward those goals, I see them as a vital component of the instrumental rationalist’s toolkit. Now, you really won’t find those goals as something advocated in pretty much any culture or society dedicated towards those functions. Exercise buffs talk about “getting fit” when this carries all sorts of cognitive baggage conceptually. Try going to a gym and asking for a physical trainer and explaining that you want none of A) getting “ripped”, B) “losing weight”, C) “building stamina”—but are simply there for longevity extension purposes through health maintenance. It’s a fun exercise. The good ones can handle it. The co-exerciser off-the-street however painfully frequently cannot.
Meditation is even worse. I have found it an invaluable tool as part of an exercise regimen towards the maintenance of a facile metacognitive-state “induction” capacity (that is, switching on the light inside my own head and peaking at what’s going on beneath all the cobwebbs, metaphorically/allegorically speaking). It also is useful in terms of maintaining a precise awareness of body signals in order to adjust—as much as can be done with the conscious invocation of placebo effect anyhow—certain physiological states such as levels of mental alertness, fatigue, pain, nausea, etc.. When viewed as an implement, I don’t believe I’d be anywhere near as successful in my “instrumentality” as I currently feel I am. But the simple truth is that all of this I have basically had to develop on my own; it’s practically impossible to avoid woo when delving into meditation.
Yes, I think the (physical and mental) health benefits for exercise and meditation are largely overrated, and can be achieved by a very limited practice
But that wouldn’t be enough to improve my looks ;-)
Also, I understand why having “enough” could be a way of managing one’s want of superstimulus, but the idea is that when you’re addicted, “enough” is a moving target. The only way to become “un-addicted” would be to abstain, or at the least titrate downwards. If the thesis behind “Your Brain on Porn” is correct, then this period of rebooting is necessary if one is to properly manage one’s addictions to a certain superstimulus, especially if the addiction is strong. Otherwise, there is always going to be some level of control that is taken away.
Karezza was touted as an alternative to full intercourse. I don’t know much else.
I don’t consider myself as morally prude, so no moralistic judgement was intended. I see where you’re coming from when you put meditation and exercise as “superstimuli”, while I didn’t necessarily: that was a bias on my part due to...
...the angle from which I was approaching this research was mainly to find a way to tackle akrasia, lack of motivation and social anxiety. I figured that central to these activities was the pleasure circuitry of the brain, so in my dilettante’s knowledge of neuroscience, I looked for a way of sensitizing this response. Abstinence from stimuli that was possibly hijacking my efforts was the only reliable way I found. Meditation and exercise would serve to aid the goals of increasing self-control, so I wouldn’t fail at abstaining, and giving a healthy alternative that would get my mind off of these “hijacks”, or limiters, or whatever word you want to use to neutrally frame things.
So, I guess you’re right to say that this wasn’t about superstimulus in and of itself. I apologize for the confusion.
Also, I understand why having “enough” could be a way of managing one’s want of superstimulus, but the idea is that when you’re addicted, “enough” is a moving target. The only way to become “un-addicted” would be to abstain, or at to least titrate downwards. If the thesis behind “Your Brain on Porn” is correct, then this period of rebooting is necessary if one is to properly manage one’s addictions to a certain superstimulus, especially if the addiction is strong. Otherwise, there is always going to be some level of control that is taken away.
Karezza was touted as an alternative to full intercourse. I don’t know much else.
I’m skeptical that this is really about superstimuli per se, mostly based on the replacements you offer.
Meditation and exercise are very much addictive and often superstimuli themselves. Their (non-fun) benefits are questionable.
Also, I don’t see what purpose karezza serves. Do you mean to masturbate without orgasm, or to use it as a sex variant? The first seems to me like just replacing one fetish with another, and the other seems like a really bad idea for a replacement because it doesn’t supply the same thing as porn.
I’m also skeptical about the whole approach. I’ve experimented with longer abstinence from superstimuli myself, but I can’t say it did me any good. It didn’t change the need for stimulation, and so I just drifted from one “addiction” into another. I only made me miserable during the transition, but had no long-term effects. I’m way happier by embracing superstimuli. I now take care to have enough of them to limit the need for escalation.
Maybe I’m overly cynical here, but this seems to me more like a moralistic judgment (these stimuli are evil, but those are fine). It certainly was for me.
Also, when you think about it, moralistic judgements are memes that evolved to deal with precisely the problem the author is talking about.
I generally take superstimuli to be things that command attention with reduced or no pay off relative to other activities. This as opposed to things that require attention and/or meet some need or goal. Obviously it’s a continuum rather than a hard distinction. Porn is an obvious example of a superstimuli. As is television, nutritionally suspect yet delicious food, etc. I don’t think either exercise or meditation are superstimuli. I feel bad on days I don’t exercise and exercise can be addictive in that sense but it still takes sustained effort to keep to an exercise routine.
Eh? In what sense—on a bang for buck/hour basis maybe?
Yes, I think the (physical and mental) health benefits for exercise and meditation are largely overrated, and can be achieved by a very limited practice, and so provide not nearly enough activity to replace a superstimulus. Going beyond that hits diminishing returns very quickly.
Plus it’s difficult to do them safely. Lots of exercise has risk of injuries, especially on the level that could compete with a superstimulus.
I also always cringe when people recommend meditation as a healthy alternative, especially because the kind of meditation they end up doing is a mixture of jhana practice and vipassana. Jhana has no plausible benefits besides being a basis for other techniques (and it’s fun and addictive, of course), and vipassana is deliberately designed to cause breakdowns, not stabilize people. Mindfulness ends up as vipassana lite, with the hope that the practitioner never gets too deep into it to cause problems.
That’s not to say that there aren’t suitable forms of meditation for health purposes, but these rarely get used in practice, and so we have the crazy situation of non-ascetics using renunciation and dissociation practices.
Food consumption is healthy to a point and taken beyond that has a point of not merely diminishing returns in terms of health and vitality but actually becomes detrimental.
So long as you have clearly defined goals and you utilize exercise and/or meditation as tools toward those goals, I see them as a vital component of the instrumental rationalist’s toolkit. Now, you really won’t find those goals as something advocated in pretty much any culture or society dedicated towards those functions. Exercise buffs talk about “getting fit” when this carries all sorts of cognitive baggage conceptually. Try going to a gym and asking for a physical trainer and explaining that you want none of A) getting “ripped”, B) “losing weight”, C) “building stamina”—but are simply there for longevity extension purposes through health maintenance. It’s a fun exercise. The good ones can handle it. The co-exerciser off-the-street however painfully frequently cannot.
Meditation is even worse. I have found it an invaluable tool as part of an exercise regimen towards the maintenance of a facile metacognitive-state “induction” capacity (that is, switching on the light inside my own head and peaking at what’s going on beneath all the cobwebbs, metaphorically/allegorically speaking). It also is useful in terms of maintaining a precise awareness of body signals in order to adjust—as much as can be done with the conscious invocation of placebo effect anyhow—certain physiological states such as levels of mental alertness, fatigue, pain, nausea, etc.. When viewed as an implement, I don’t believe I’d be anywhere near as successful in my “instrumentality” as I currently feel I am. But the simple truth is that all of this I have basically had to develop on my own; it’s practically impossible to avoid woo when delving into meditation.
But that wouldn’t be enough to improve my looks ;-)
Also, I understand why having “enough” could be a way of managing one’s want of superstimulus, but the idea is that when you’re addicted, “enough” is a moving target. The only way to become “un-addicted” would be to abstain, or at the least titrate downwards. If the thesis behind “Your Brain on Porn” is correct, then this period of rebooting is necessary if one is to properly manage one’s addictions to a certain superstimulus, especially if the addiction is strong. Otherwise, there is always going to be some level of control that is taken away.
Karezza was touted as an alternative to full intercourse. I don’t know much else.
I don’t consider myself as morally prude, so no moralistic judgement was intended. I see where you’re coming from when you put meditation and exercise as “superstimuli”, while I didn’t necessarily: that was a bias on my part due to...
...the angle from which I was approaching this research was mainly to find a way to tackle akrasia, lack of motivation and social anxiety. I figured that central to these activities was the pleasure circuitry of the brain, so in my dilettante’s knowledge of neuroscience, I looked for a way of sensitizing this response. Abstinence from stimuli that was possibly hijacking my efforts was the only reliable way I found. Meditation and exercise would serve to aid the goals of increasing self-control, so I wouldn’t fail at abstaining, and giving a healthy alternative that would get my mind off of these “hijacks”, or limiters, or whatever word you want to use to neutrally frame things.
So, I guess you’re right to say that this wasn’t about superstimulus in and of itself. I apologize for the confusion.
Also, I understand why having “enough” could be a way of managing one’s want of superstimulus, but the idea is that when you’re addicted, “enough” is a moving target. The only way to become “un-addicted” would be to abstain, or at to least titrate downwards. If the thesis behind “Your Brain on Porn” is correct, then this period of rebooting is necessary if one is to properly manage one’s addictions to a certain superstimulus, especially if the addiction is strong. Otherwise, there is always going to be some level of control that is taken away.
Karezza was touted as an alternative to full intercourse. I don’t know much else.