
The Hedonic Treadmill - bmc7505
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
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skrebbel
Ha! I'm familiar with the phenomenon, but I hadn't heard it described as a
"treadmill" before. Most metaphors out there (eg most computer science jargon)
fit well on a superficial level, but the analogy breaks down when you go
deeper. But sometimes, someone comes up with a metaphor for something that's
_such_ a good fit that it just makes my day.

The Hedonic Treadmill is definitely one of those. It's not just the
repetitiveness, but also the exhaustion, the endlessness, the pointlessness
even to some extent. And, in some sense, maybe even the progress you can make
over a long time when using a treadmill frequently. Like, you learn to embrace
the pointlessness of being on a treadmill, running but going absolutely
nowhere, and that insight in itself makes it so that you're not running
nowhere at all. Kinda sorta.

~~~
kodz4
A good story helps. Why does a millionaire athlete walk into a stadium day in
day out to experience pain, emotional and physical, at a level most people
cant take? Why don't single moms juggling multiple minimum wage jobs even
bother? Why not just ditch the kids at an orphanage? There is always a story
people tell themselves. Good stories can shift outcomes.

We are lucky to be alive at a time when information such as this is coming
online and awareness is rising.

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scotty79
That's the worst name for the simplest thing. I'd call it 'illusion of
impact'. What happens to you seems like it's affecting you but really doesn't.
After a while you feel no happier or sadder that you have always been. It's
because your happiness is biological and you can improve it or harm it
lastingly only by affecting your biology. Getting more money won't affect it.
Sleeping longer, moving more, eating with more variety or leaving people and
places that cause immense daily stress, properly diagnosing and treating that
reflux, fixing your teeth just might.

People are so keen to jump at the fact that mind somewhat affects the body,
but often miss the fact that mind is the part of the body.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Reducing volatility and increasing security of health, food, and shelter makes
me happy, and more money certainly is a way to achieve that in the environment
I live in. I’m sure it’s biological as it’s still chemicals in the brain.

I define happiness as meeting one’s expectations, or maybe unhappiness as not
meeting one’s expectations.

~~~
scotty79
Lack of money prevents you from getting things that help keep your body in
good condition. So it this sense money can improve your happiness. Just not
directly. Having money does nothing for you. Spending money to improve your
health, diet and leave the place that harms you is what makes you happier.

I don't think you can define happiness. It's a primary emotion. How do you
define pain?

~~~
lotsofpulp
It’s definitely not a perfect definition, but I find it useful for myself most
times. I would have to separate pain into two, one from injury or ailment, and
mental pain from losing something such as a relationship or opportunity.

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sadface
The way this is phrased makes it seem like this "treadmill" is a bad thing. I
acknowledge that this is bad for an individual, but I actually think this is
overall good for humanity and is a major reason why we've developed so much so
quickly.

We know plenty of animal species are really smart, but they've never figured
out how to build skyscrapers or generate electricity. We chalk this up to the
fact that "humans are just smarter", but even in humans brains alone don't
bring accomplishments. There has to be associated action, and people need
motivation to actually take that action.

Our ancestors didn't say "well I've figured out how to grow some wheat and
live in a straw hut, so I'm good now". Sure, they probably did for a while,
but soon they started looking for easier ways to grind their flour and tastier
ways to cook it because they stopped being satisfied with the status quo.
Extend this for ten millenia and now we have billions of people connected to a
global network from devices in their pocket.

If humans were always perfectly happy all the time, I don't think we'd have
come as far as we have. The "return to dissatisfied normalcy" that comes over
time is part of our nature and it may be one of the most important parts for
explaining why we got here.

~~~
lotsofpulp
>because they stopped being satisfied with the status quo.

There were tribes that were satisfied with the status quo (or were unable to
advance out of bad luck or environment or whatever), and they got wrecked by
tribes who kept advancing.

I don’t thinks it’s a property unique to humans, all species try to gain more
and more power, humans just have far more capacity. More power means more
reliable food, shelter, and mating opportunity, thus more likelihood of
procreating.

This can be to a fault. Even today, if a tribe (e.g. country) were to stop
consuming to protect future generations, stop unnecessary weapons development
and testing, trade, etc, they would be at a disadvantage in the short term
power wise versus another country that kept going full steam ahead.

What’s good in short term might not be in the long term, and evolution doesn’t
optimize for that.

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gexla
I think most people referencing this term aren't really talking about a
hedonic treadmill. There's a lot of talk about getting richer and not happier.
But the key to me is adaptation. As we move from one situation to another we
adapt to that situation, better or worse. We may think prison would be total
hell, but then get there and find that it's tolerable. Similarly, we could get
a windfall or major financial breakthrough and soon find that our state
doesn't much change.

I find there's a certain texture to my day to day and it takes a lot to change
that. There may seemingly be a lot of changes around me, but the texture of my
day stays largely the same. A major increase of salary might open a world of
options, but my time is my real bottleneck. I can make a list of things I
would like to do and then come to the conclusion that it's best to do nothing.
I imagine starting from a template for a painting session which is plain but
not blank. I can paint all sort of wild possibilities but then realize that my
reality is still that same plain template. I paint stories of dramas, ups,
downs, victories, downfalls, etc and the realize that nothing has actually
changed in the background. I just made all that other stuff up. Yes, the boss
really did fly off the handle and I feared for my job, but I know that
tomorrow will be business as usual.

Question for you guys. Do you feel that the hedonis treadmill is a thing which
pushes us forward? I would argue that it does the opposite, it holds us back.
I feel the greatest growth comes from the smallest period of being in
adaptation. Just long enough to decide, act, observe and get back to
orientation. It's just a long improv.

~~~
MattSayar
Sadly noone answered your question, but luckily I'm here a week later thanks
to Kale's hacker newsletter.

No, I don't think the hedonistic treadmill is what pushes us forward, I think
"necessity is the mother of invention." And it goes both ways in my opinion;
to use your example, a person in prison will adapt and find it's not so bad,
but then a lot of prisoners resourcefully create contraband to fulfill their
needs, which "pushes them forward." Likewise a rich person may "need" a faster
yacht, so they fund technology to invent one, thereby "pushing us forward."

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arketyp
In the way that being content is an evolutionary disaster, it makes sense that
we always have an itch to scratch.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The trouble is advertising and marketing have irritated it so much that we
have gone past the point where scratching was good. That itch has turned into
a gaping wound filled with puss and blood.

~~~
pascalxus
but, are we really so susceptible to advertising and marketing now? I know the
baby boomers were with their enormous cars, boats and house purchases and
their materialism stuff homes and maxed out credit cards. But, I see the
millennial not taking part in that quite to the same extent - i think their
percentage of spending on cars, for example, is much lower. We may be in a
turning point here where advertising affects us less and less.

Edit:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/researc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/research-
shows-millennials-dont-respond-to-ads/#20105445dcb2)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The cynic in me thinks that’s because they have less disposable income.

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clamprecht
Last time this was submitted, it only got 2 upvotes. That just wasn't good
enough.

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reallydontask
probably next time it'll go even higher, it just needs more and more

~~~
majewsky
The problem is that, even if it the score goes a bit higher each time, it will
not satisfy us and we will be as frustrated with the new higher score than we
were with the previous score.

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k__
I'm living non-monogamous and in the poly community we often talk about a
similar phenomenon called "Relationship Escalator", which is less general than
the "Hedonic Treadmill".

The idea is that most people see a relationship as an escalator where you move
up somehow automatically. First you date, than you're going steady, then you
move in together, marriage, kids etc. pp.

The hedonic treadmill is considered one of the reasons for this behavior. Many
people are most happy at the beginning of a relationship, when they get less
happy they try to do something to get back to the starting level.

Points here are:

1\. The space of new things you can do with your relationships isn't one
dimensional, you don't have to move in one direction to get happier.

2\. Maybe you're just running in the hedonic treadmill and don't realize it,
so take some time to evaluate your life before you do things that are hard to
impossible to revert.

~~~
raducu
No offense, but aren't you guys the ones who keep on the hedonic treadmill by
constantly changing partners and are never actually satisfied?

The ones actually chasing after that new relationship energy/dopamine rush?

Isn't it backwards to spin the normal progression of a romantic relationship
as hedonic?

Are the people into poly some kind of saints/ascets and the people on the
"relationship escalator" the hedonits? (this is not meant to be a straw man)

~~~
k__
Just because you have multiple partners doesn't mean that you have to be
"constantly changing partners".

You are totally right, there are many people who run after the "new
relationship energy" as other people are ascending the "relationship
escalator". I just wanted to point out that there isn't one right way to
happiness in relationships :)

~~~
raducu
I think hedonism is a valid personal choice(if it's a culture-wide beneficial
choice -- that's debatable), there's no need to paint other choices black(not
saying you were doing directly).

Experiencing in myself and other what you call the "relationship escalator"
\-- I can assure you it's not driven by hedonism, it's just a functional
necessity, at least in the vast majority of cases and history(sure there can
be people doing it to brag on social media).

To me it seems that the term "relationship escalator" is pejorative and that
you were conflating it with the "hedonic treadmill" and somehow contrasting it
with polyamory.

The "hedonic treadmill" effect as described in the wikipedia should apply just
as much to monogamy and polyamory or celibacy -- after all, it suggests you
will revert to mean happyness after a while.

~~~
k__
I have the impression that is just what I said.

I didn't mean to talk monogamy down, I just said I heard about the concept of
a relationship escalator in my poly community and it reminded me of the
hedonic treadmill.

Doesn't mean that I don't met polys that had the hedonic treadmill problem.

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xyzal
Funny. In my college days, one evening after a one too many drinks, my pals
and me formulated what we called "Theory of constant happiness", and its core
postulate was that perceived happiness was not proportional to satiation of
individual needs, but to the derivation of such satiation in time. It was of
course promptly forgotten.

It is nice to see there was a grain of truth in our theory.

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bschne
Slightly OT, but does anyone have a digital copy of the original paper cited
in the article? Would love to read it but I can't find a PDF or a doi to
search for on Scihub.

 _Brickman; Campbell (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society.
New York: Academic Press. pp. 287–302. in M. H. Apley, ed., Adaptation Level
Theory: A Symposium, New York: Academic Press_

~~~
kennyadam
Closest I can come is finding the print copy of Adaptation Level Theory: A
Symposium on Amazon and eBay for a few bucks.

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perfunctory
This is a great name for the phenomenon. While running the metaphorical
treadmill, not only we don't get happier, we are also heating up the planet at
an unprecedented rate. Slow down people.

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jerrygoyal
pieter levels wrote an article about it referencing to the bilzerian
interview, you'll enjoy it [https://levels.io/hedonic-
treadmill/](https://levels.io/hedonic-treadmill/)

~~~
GershwinA
Thanks for sharing this, interesting.

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godelmachine
I remember reading this a few years ago.

Feels good to have read this again :)

~~~
2000andlate
But despite any positive or negative events, it still feels about as good as
it did then, right? ;)

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Yajirobe
Surprised to see Schopenhauer not mentioned at all.

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mmmbob
I just picked up a Sole treadmill. Gonna rig it up to my desk to see if I can
work and walk.

