LogFAQs > #956325820

Reigning_King posted...

I never used the word misery, negative can refer to any harm no matter how slight. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleepiness, bowel and bladder distention, even a mere itch can be seen as negative. Once again I ask you for a list of what you consider intrinsically enjoyable so I can break it down for you.

Consider the difference between eating stale bread and eating a slice of bread so fresh it's still slightly warm. Their ability to stave off hunger is identical, but the latter offers a positive experience that goes well beyond merely preventing hunger. Heck, consider dessert as a fundamental concept: That's food you're eating because it's fun to eat, not to sustain yourself (though the caloric content does help). Similarly, there's a world of difference between dealing with boredom by playing your favourite game and dealing with it by playing Solitaire or Minesweeper.

Again, there's a very substantial range of "good" beyond "this fixes that unpleasantness I felt." Happiness is intrinsically enjoyable.

Reigning_King posted...

Another facet here (not the one about brain states that you've ignored) is that people are known to be bad judges of the quality of their lives because of various psychological mechanisms. One is called Pollyannaism, or the general bent towards optimism humanity has, another is the high adaptability of humanity. People can become accustomed to nearly any situation, things that they might have said they would rather die than go through a few years before finding themselves in such a situation. The point I'm making is that people tend not to realize how much negativity is in their lives to begin with and from that point they still evaluate themselves higher than their peers would. This has to be taken into account when discussing how positive or negative a life is which was the orginal focus of this reply chain.

If you don't care about any of the ways in which your life could be said to measurably suck, is there actually any reason to say that your life sucks? At its most basic definition, "harm" is simply "something I would prefer not to experience." Therefore, somebody who doesn't care enough to have a preference hasn't actually experienced harm. Insisting that they have and should therefore be miserable is profoundly arrogant.

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