Conversation

Suppose you operate at 100 watts basal metabolism, and 50 watts for comfortable work. You plan to do two 4-hour things today, task A in the morning and B in the afternoon A can go right and take 25w for 4 hours, or go wrong and take 30w for 8 hours. 50-50 B takes 25w...
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Your best case power output expectation is 25w for 8 hours. Comfy. Your worst case is 30w for 4 hours, 55w for the next 4 (assuming you continue to do A and B in parallel) So your stress level will be in response to 5w output beyond “comfortable”
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If you apply this reasoning to everything you vaguely think you’re going to do in the short term, your expected uncomfortable power output = distress level in anticipation It’s not power output level that causes stress but uncertainty in power output level. Here range is 25-55.
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You can expect a variable but deterministic power output profile above basal. For example, sedentary 25w for 4h, gentle walking at 100w for an hour, exercise at 200w for 30 minutes... etc But it’s the uncertainty band that matters.
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Comes in 2 flavors. Eustress is good uncertainty like the unpredictable power output in a sport. Distress is bad uncertainty like a fight. This distinction is not very satisfying. It would be nice to define stress in more basic terms.
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I think eustress is not actually different. It is just downside-capped distress expectation. Like playing a sport with safety gear means serious injury probability is pretty low and you can dismiss it. What’s left is “exciting” rather than stressful.
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“Bad” expectations are like unlimited downside = unlimited energy demand, all the way to fatal. That’s why a serious medical diagnosis is way more stressful even though there is very little active immediate energy demand.
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Hmm. I think the difference might be reversibility. The prospect of jogging for 30min at 200 watts (= 360 kJ = 86 calories) is merely eustressful because you expect any muscle wear to be easily repaired through normal rest. The prospect of breaking a leg otoh... distressful
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Why... because you expect a much higher energy load in healing, and possibly never healing perfectly, so the energy demands of the rest of life go up. You can expect everything to be a bit harder. Your base life power rate goes up. And this is without even the pain expectation.
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Though, not all irreversible increases in rest-of-life power output are distressful. If good things happen, so that your life becomes more worth living, you might enjoy living it more energetically. Hmm. So gotta calculate quality of life in terms of the desired power output.
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Okay, so final... you recursively back up the energy equation for steady-state life conditions (watts to live, watts that are fun) from deathbed, via irreversible changes. The net rate of irreversible changes that lead to better/worse lives (= “growth”/“decline”?) is the key.
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Feels like I’m sketching out an energy version of Schmidhuber interestingness/compression progress type argument. Stress is the second derivative of rate of irreversible energy[expectation changes or something.
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The difference here I think is that the information is not the primitive, energy is. Information can regulate uncertainty and thereby modulate energy expenditure expectations.
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Maybe we can define psychological death as an expectation of system-breaking energy surge you know you cannot produce. As in, “I can’t outrun the lion” sort of thing. All you can do is turn Buddhist extremely fast before the lion pounces.
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Happily ever after = terminal boundary condition = zero watts state of death But via big maxed-out failed spike, Iike death convulsions Hmm, macabre thought, what’s the energy load of various ways to die? I think I’d like to glide smoothly to zero.
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Energy of course is just one variable in a bodily response. I expect fatal acute respiratory distress isn’t particularly high energy, but the distress will come from the fact that the energetic response (willed+automatic) won’t regulate the pain signal.
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Okay, new twist: agency. If energetic actions actually affect the pain/pleasure and expectations thereof, it’s “good” energy output. It’s good if you’re closing a gap, bad if the gap is widening anyway. If you can actually outrun the lion, it becomes a game.
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Imagine someone approaching death. Most of the events on the horizon are predictable (tests, medicines, strange hospital environment with strange nurses and doctors poking/prodding you, growing discomfort, increasingly aggressive body envelope violation with tubes/needles...)
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But by definition, dying will mean more and more of the tests will come back with bad news and trigger more discomfort and activity. Your overall sense of well-being will decline even as energy output by you and on your behalf goes up, with falling effectiveness. Lion catching up
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At some point the ultimate irreversible event horizon will appear. This way, at 49% likelihood, lies a chaotic, energetic struggle and recovery. That way, at 51%, lies the Game Over. The uncertainty regulation here will break down discontinuously. The mortality singularity.
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Hmm. I think I’ve uncovered a conceptual question: what’s the difference between regular irreversibility and death? Answer is approximately “there is nothing it’s like to look back and feel loss from the other side because there’s no continuous I-self making the transition”
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Straggling thought. Exercise lowers stress because it recalibrates your sense of how much power you can output. A cognitive “pump” effect that temporarily makes your uncertainty regulation band larger. Of course it doesn’t last so many just turn into gym addicts.
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