Life Satisfaction
Drugs are a bet with the mind.
-Jim Morrison
I agree with Alan Watts that life is not a journey; It’s a dance. So it behooves us to enjoy our dance. In order to enjoy our dance, we need a framework for which to think about it. Kevin Simler proposes:
Life satisfaction = Pleasure + Meaning
We can assign a value of 1-10 for each. So a life satisfaction of 20 would be the most pleasurable, most meaningful life, while a life satisfaction of 2 would be the least pleasurable, least meaningful life.
Kevin explains:
… pleasure is a strictly subjective experience. You can close your eyes and bliss out as hard as you like, and the pleasure you experience will be no less valid because it's "just in your mind." Meaning, on the other hand, is entangled with external reality, making it possible to be wrong about it. And thus the pursuit of true meaning requires an outward orientation to the world.
To drive this point home, consider the "experience machine," a thought experiment originally dreamt up by philosopher Robert Nozick. (Sarah discusses this at length in her book, Every Cradle is a Grave.) The experience machine is a virtual reality life-simulator designed to make you feel happy and fulfilled. A neuroscientist puts you in a tank, hooks your brain up to some electrodes, and starts feeding you wonderful experiences. There are obvious parallels here to the Matrix (although Nozick proposed it some 25 years before the movie). Perhaps the biggest difference, though, apart from the happiness factor, is that the experience machine is designed for a single occupant. It's just you in there, all by yourself. Everyone you interact with "inside" the machine — your friends, family, etc. — will all be simulated.
Now, suppose you're given a choice between (A) continuing life as normal, or (B) plugging yourself into the experience machine. Your choice is completely binding. If you choose the machine, you'll live out the rest of your days in virtual reality rather than base-level reality. It'll be like a perfect dream that you never wake up from.
When confronted with this choice, some people say they'd gladly choose the machine. Many others, however, are put off by the prospect of living in a simulated reality, no matter how utopian. Why?
One reason is that a life in the machine has no meaning, at least from the perspective of someone standing outside it. To choose the tank would be to render your real life a causal dead-end; you'd become as irrelevant as a brain-dead patient on life support. So if you actually care about things in the real world — the lives of your children or other family members, for example — you can't in good conscience abandon them for the machine.
Of course, what you'd experience in the machine might make you feel as meaningful as Jesus or Harry Potter. But at the moment you're presented with the choice, your eyes are wide open, and you know the machine is an illusion. And many people would sooner suffer in reality than live a lie, however beautiful it may be. This is why meaning can't be modeled as simply another piece of the "pleasure" package.
My issue with these definitions is that meaning is also subjective. It’s meaningful for one person to be the best archer in the world. For someone else, what’s meaningful is to be a Rhodes Scholar, for someone else it’s to be the best swimmer. Yes, these are partially external but how our mind frames things internally matters.
To use the “experience machine” example, if one is convinced that the people in the simulation have consciousness, then what makes life in the simulation any less meaningful than life outside the simulation? Maybe someone is objectively “wrong” about what is meaningful, but that doesn’t affect their life satisfaction.
One can spend their life successfully implementing a communist/fascist regime in their country. They pass away feeling accomplished for what they built. After they die, their regime causes the needless death of millions of their countrymen. The consequences of their actions didn’t affect their life satisfaction.
Pleasure is what we feel. Meaning is what we perceive to be meaningful. Meaning can be false. Pleasure, in an odd way, is even more real than meaning. So for any given moment:
Life satisfaction = [Pleasure] + [Perceived meaning]
This is incomplete.
A more encompassing formula accounts for life satisfaction over the course of a lifetime. We all have a finite amount of time in which to experience life. But the exact quantity of time is not what’s important. One can have months go by and have it feel like a week has passed, or one can have a week go by and have it feel like months have passed. For a given lifetime, this leads us to alter the equation to:
[Total life satisfaction] = ([Pleasure] + [Perceived meaning]) * [Perceived time lived]
There are ways we can tweak any of these variables, e.g. new experiences increase our perceived time, blacking out decreases our perceived time, working out can increase pleasure, pursuing our passions can increase meaning.
Alternatively, drugs can alter pleasure, perceived meaning, or perceived time. Drugs pose risks. This is not an endorsement of any drug. I personally don’t partake in most. I don’t even drink caffeine. What interests me is how drugs are strictly internal but can hack both pleasure, perceived meaning, and perceived time.
Stimulants-- caffeine, cocaine, nicotine, MDMA, amphetamine. Any drug that spikes our dopamine to give pleasure. They simulate dopamine spikes we experience when eating delicious food or during sex. These drugs artificially increase pleasure. This pleasure increase is temporary/only when the drug is affecting the person. Stimulants borrow against future pleasure to experience more pleasure in the moment.
Depressants-- alcohol, opioids, cannabis. Reduces arousal and stimulation in different parts of the brain. These drugs artificially increase meaning in one's life. This meaning increase is temporary/only when the drug is affecting the person.
Psychedelics-- LSD, psilocybin, DMT. Can change our mindset and way we view the world. This reframing increases meaning when done right. The effects can last months or even be permanent in some cases. Trips can be extremely memorable and feel like they last years. This increases perceived time. New connections made in the brain can be super positive when the brain is mature enough to handle and process them.
Antidepressants-- serotonin inhibitors/stimulators, ketamine. Antidepressants increase both meaning and pleasure. Depressed people aren’t sad, they generally feel nothing. They’re empty. These drugs can ascribe meaning to their life or simply the song they’re listening to. Antidepressants may allow someone depressed to feel pleasure. The effects last as long as the drugs are being taken. For many, that’s their entire life.
Drugs are a mini-version of the “experience machine” with potentially adverse consequences.
A tolerance is built to most drugs over time where more is required to have less of an impact. One can have great benefits from antidepressants and psychedelics. But when used improperly, these drugs can destroy meaning or make people lose touch with reality. The upside of stimulants and depressants is that they can temporarily increase life satisfaction. The danger is that they can make people ok with not doing anything in life. If you can increase life satisfaction by hacking your brain all day, then you don’t need to do anything. Stimulants and depressants can also be addictive. For any drug, proceed with caution.
Unfortunately, optimizing individual life satisfaction can be at odds with truth. Before optimizing life satisfaction, we should examine our values. Society works best when perceived meaning is tied to a positive sum moral framework.