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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #98 (Pleasure)

Published about 2 months ago • 5 min read

1 Family Photo:
Pleasure

On the first day of college, my economics professor lied to me.

He said economics is a positive science—it describes the world as it is rather than how it ought to be.

Then he explained utility—valuing all the pleasure and future pleasure in a thing. He said we can't see inside people's heads to sum up all that pleasure, so instead economists assume people are rational, count the dollars they're willing to pay for things, and approximate value that way.

Then I spent the next four years drawing graphs with an X.

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Measuring pleasure is complicated. I am more than one-self to please: I am my present self, I am the remembrance of my past self, I am the anticipation of my future self. How is any one person supposed to make rational, utility-maximizing decisions to satisfy these three selves, not to mention all the other selves we also hold dear?

It takes a real economist to come up with a theory of rational opioid addiction.

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This week, Lawrence helped cook dinner and Calvin helped vacuum the car. These were pleasant activities. In contexts, they might have been considered unpleasant chores. But Lawrence and Calvin wanted to help. Agency makes a big difference.

My dad had this lifehack where if we ever asked, "Do you have to do X?" he would respond, "No, I get to do X."

Then we would roll our eyes.

He had a point though. The same activity can be pleasant if we think of it as a privileged choice, and unpleasant if we think of it as a forced obligation.

Sometimes, pleasure-maximizing is just a frame of mind.

1 Dad Joke:
Pleasant Food

Do yourself a favor, take one-minute to watch this dad cook toy food like salt bae video. I've watched it 20+ times. I've studied it. I love so much about it - the magnatile knife block, the egg yolk drop, the onions, THE ONIONS!!! I think we have about half the gear necessary to pull off this routine at home. I hope the salt bae meme doesn't go extinct before I get a chance to do my own version.

Highlights:
Pleasant Thoughts

​The Dead World of Blippi by Nathan J. Robinson​

One of the most unsettling voids in the Blippi videos is the emotional one.
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There is no feeling whatsoever in Blippi. There is just sugar-high manic bouncing around. These videos are supposedly “educational,” but they don’t teach you anything about being a curious person, or being kind, or thinking about things in new and unexpected ways.
I cannot help but think of Donald Trump when I see Blippi. Trump, too, is a person who is totally uninterested in books, art, and music. (Does Trump even have a favorite band? Has he ever listened to music for pleasure?)...Trump is impressed by things being big and impressive, and just about the only facts he knows about the world is what color things are and how much they cost...the problem is not that he doesn’t go to the opera, it’s that he is totally uninterested in other people or in anything beyond the most boring superficial material objects in front of his nose.

​The State of the Culture, 2024 by Ted Gioia​

The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction. Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity.
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The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.
This is more than just the hot trend of 2024. It can last forever—because it’s based on body chemistry, not fashion or aesthetics.
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Our brain rewards these brief bursts of distraction. The neurochemical dopamine is released, and this makes us feel good—so we want to repeat the stimulus.
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...This is a familiar model for addiction.
The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers.
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Addiction is the goal.
Here’s where the science gets really ugly. The more addicts rely on these stimuli, the less pleasure they receive. At a certain point, this cycle creates anhedonia—the complete absence of enjoyment in an experience supposedly pursued for pleasure.
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That seems like a paradox.
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​How can pursuing pleasure lead to less pleasure? But that’s how our brains are wired (perhaps as a protective mechanism). At a certain point, addicts still pursue the stimulus, but more to avoid the pain of dopamine deprivation.

​This Simple Behavioral Trick Can Help You Get More Out of Life by Cass Sunstein​

A nice table is pleasant, but the joy experienced during the first hour fades over time. The reason? Habituation. That’s our brain’s tendency to respond less and less to things that are constant, that don’t change. As we get used to the pleasant aspects of our life, both big (a loving spouse, a comfortable home, a good job) and small (a great view, a tasty dish), we notice and appreciate them less. Unless, that is, you break up the experience. Moving to the more cramped bit of the restaurant for a while (perhaps to visit the bathroom) will trigger dishabituation, making the luxury of your window seat more salient.
There’s some folk wisdom embodied here, perhaps. Exhortations to “get it over and done with”, or “rip off the Band-Aid” are familiar – and in “absence makes the heart grow fonder” we have, perhaps, some age-old advice that recognises the influence of habituation in relationships. But although they’re there in our language, it seems we have a hard time overcoming our intuitions to the contrary. The results of psychological experiments are clear, however, and being mindful of habituation’s powerful effect could help us all experience a bit less pain and a little more pleasure.

​Sphere and Loathing in Las Vegas by Charlie Warzel​

I asked Williams what he thought about engineering a spectacle that feels explicitly designed to compel people to take out their phone and point it at the stage for two straight hours. At first he seemed to align with my thinking. People don’t sing as loudly at shows as they used to, he argued, because they’re distracted filming. For Bono’s recent one-man show in New York, the pair had decided to ban cellphone recording to achieve an intimate effect, but, working on the Sphere, Williams told me he came to embrace the phones-up experience. “The vast repository of the record of my work is shot by people I don’t know,” he said. “And so not only do they become participants but also collaborators and curators of my work.” He described the Sphere residency as perhaps an extreme version of what live music has evolved toward: A “gigantic group project to archive these shows, one where we are collaborating with the audience and building a body of evidence.”
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His response was kind of beautiful and genuinely disarming. Fixating on what we’ve lost in our modern screenland means ignoring the joy that comes from sharing your experience with others. And it means ignoring that participatory feeling—a 21st-century exchange between musicians and concertgoers that is still so novel that neither side seems to know precisely what to make of it yet.
I wanted to be cynical about the Sphere and all it represents—our phones as appendages, screens as a mediated form of experiencing the world. There’s plenty to dislike about the thing—the impersonal flashiness of it all, its $30 tequila sodas, the likely staggering electricity bills. But it is also my solemn duty to report to you that the Sphere slaps, much in the same way that, say, the Super Bowl slaps. It’s gaudy, overly commercialized, and cool as hell: a brand-new, non-pharmaceutical sensory experience.

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iamJoshKnox Highlight:

Words that Matter:

A few weeks ago, I posted a collection of essays that matter to me.

The awesome people at Matter republished my post in their newsletter!

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Also, my book is still available on Amazon here – or reply to this email and it would be a pleasure to gift you a copy.

Fancy a Chat?

It would be my pleasure to talk to you:

​Let's Chat!​

Book some time even if you don't know what you want to talk about:
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Until next week,
​iamJoshKnox​​

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Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

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