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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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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Irreversibility assumes a continuous perspective looking backward and forward in time.
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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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End of conversation
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