We divide the world to stop us feeling frightened
Into wrong and into right and
Into black and into white and
Into real men and fairies
Into status quo and scary
Yeah we want the world binary, binary
But it's not that simple
- Tim Minchin, The Fence
In 1905/1915, Einstein shocked the world with his newly formulated “Theory of Relativity”. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a physicist to understand the fundamental idea here. Now that you have an understanding of Gradient Analysis (from 03 - Nuance) you’ll quickly see that his theory was really just a more mathematical version of Gradient Analysis. Basically what he proposed was that time, something that appears so fixed to us, was in-fact relative (surprise! another gradient!). It showed that if you sent someone out into space and they moved really really fast for a while and then returned to earth, they would have actually experienced less time then had passed here on earth. Crazy right?
Dimensions of Experience
For the remainder of this chapter we are going to be talking about experiences as dimensions. Don’t worry, this wont get into complex algebra; if you can understand the basic idea behind the graph of a stock or temperature changes over time then you’ll be totally fine. Like these examples, our graphs will have time on the horizontal axis moving from left to right as time passes. The difference will be on the vertical axis; while the examples have stock price and temperature on the vertical, we will be using emotions. If this seems inconceivable, then go back and read 03 - Nuance. Short version: emotions are adjectives which means they can best be understood as a gradient and the beautiful thing about gradients is that they look really damn good on a graph axis as a dimension. Einstein would be proud.
Dependent Dimensions
Now I know I promised I wouldn’t get too technical, but because I know people will still be wrapping their head around 03 - Nuance, I need to hammer this point home. Because emotions are adjectives/gradients their definitions are, by definition, inherently imprecise. In grammar this impreciseness is evident though synonyms: two words that have very similar meanings. The fun thing about synonyms is that if you keep looking at synonyms for the least-synonymous synonym from the list of synonyms you will eventually arrive at an antonym (ie an opposite).
It is for this reason that we need to classify these dimensions of emotion as dependent dimensions because of their imprecise gradient nature and how they all relate to one another.
This is important because in the following examples we will be focusing on the pleasure/pain dimension only because it is the most broad and simple to follow, but its worth remembering that a host of other emotions are synonymous with this dimension. Look no further then the example above: “happy” is synonymous with “pleasure” and “unhappy” is synonymous with “pain”. It’s all related because, well (I’m going to say it again), everything is a gradient.
Upper & Lower Bounds of Experience
With our understanding of emotional dimensions at hand, let’s consider the following scenarios:
- When you go a while without eating tasty food, and then something that you may have previously considered bland all the sudden tastes amazing.
- When you drink a lot, get very hungover, can’t stand the thought of having another drink, and then proceed to do it all again a short while later.
- When you are very cold and come into a normal room-temperature space, it feels warm.
All of these things happen because the points in which we compare our experience to, the upper and lower bounds, change in near real time. In the case of the first example, it only takes a few days of eating bland food before something previously mediocre tastes amazing. In the grand scheme of your entire life, a few days is but a very small percentage, and yet thats all it takes to change your real-time experience of something as basic as eating. In the second example, depending on your proclivity to drink, it’s probably a bit longer than a few days. Your memory of the unpleasant experience of a hangover fades away day by day eventually to the point where you may remember that it was bad, but you can’t remember what it felt like. The third example is on the other end of the spectrum where the comparison point follows almost exactly with the experience. If you stand outside in the cold for 5 minutes, come back inside and warm up it feels nice; then if you step back out into the same cold for another 5 minutes, and then step back inside and warm up, the second time you warm up feels just as nice as the first time.
Now each of these examples are something physical, but what about emotional experiences? The same idea holds:
- You forget someone’s name, feel embarrassed, promise to yourself you will get better at remembering names, don’t, and the cycle repeats
- Have a fun experience with family/friends and then feel lonely a few days later
- Get your heart broken and say you’ll never open yourself up emotionally again, but then do a few months/years later
For the first example the comparison point fades away in probably just a few minutes/hours, in the second one its a few days, and in the third one it can be anywhere from a few months to a few years.
Widening the Bounds: Experiences
The point here is that the upper and lower bounds (the points of comparison) for both our physical and emotional experiences change with time. Your real-time experience can never exceed the upper or lower bounds because, by definition, the upper and lower bounds are the historical trace of the best and worst experience that you can still feel. That last bit is an important distinction; they are not simply the best and worse experience you can remember. Now you may ask, what is the difference between feeling and remembering? Using the examples from above:
- When reflecting back on it many days/weeks/months later you may remember the embarrassment you felt when you forgot someone’s name, but you don’t feel that embarrassment in your later moment of reflection nearly as much as you did in the moment.
- When reflecting back on a positive social event, you may remember that during the event you did not feel lonely, but now in your later state of reflection you can’t manifest that feeling again - you can only remember that you once felt it.
- When reflecting back on a painful romantic experience many years later, you can remember how the heartbreak felt, but you don’t feel those same emotions at nearly the same level as you did during/shortly after.
Upper and lower bounds are defined by feelings, and as a result they converge (ie tend towards) the current real-time experience. This is the process of a feeling fading away, however this “fading” is important unto its self.
Narrowing the Bounds: Feeling Fade
The rate at which our feelings fade is different between people and different for each type of feeling. Emotional experiences tend to take longer to fade compared to physical ones which can fade very quickly. We will get into the more when we talk about Dimensions of Experience, but for now all thats important is to know that feelings fade over time, and by fading we mean they converge back towards the current experience.
Magnitudes
The Upper and Lower Bounds of Experience define the relative direction of an experience, ie does it feel good or bad, but they also define the magnitude, ie how good or how bad does it feel. The magnitude is dependent on how far your current experience is from the upper/lower bound. Magnitudes are a quantity, volume, amount, etc. Using the examples above:
- The discomfort you feel when forgetting someone’s name is at its maximum during the moment when your forgetfulness is confronted (ie “It was nice to meet you, uh, sorry, what was your name again?”) but then progressively decreases from that moment onwards.
- In the opposite manner, the loneliness you feel after the conclusion of a social event is at its minimum in the exact moment you depart and then progressively grows over time.
- The hurt you feel after a breakup is at its maximum in the moments immediately after the breakup (barring any shock you experience) and gradually, on average, decreases over time.
Putting it all Together
Now that we understand bounds and magnitudes, we can put them together into a coherent understanding of experience over time. For this example we will talk about a positive event but the exact same process in the inverse would occur for a negative event. When we experience a positive event that is more positive then anything we can currently feel, we raise our upper bound of experience. The results in a maximum magnitude, which is the quantification of how good the experience is.
Then as the experience subsides, our real-time experience and the resulting pleasure magnitude begins to drop but our upper bound remains at the same level as the experience is still fresh in our minds. Then over time, depending on the type of experience and how novel it was, the upper bound begins the process of Feeling Fade and decreases.
[diagram needed]
Another important note is that the same experience can have a decreasing impact on bounds/magnitudes the more often you have the experience. Repeating experiences often have the same direction (ie something that is a positive experience is usually always a positive experience) but they can become less novel. #TBC
Comparing with Others
Now that we have a model to understand an individual’s experience over time, the question arises as to how we can compare and contrast that against the experience of others. The short answer is: you can’t. The reason being that every person has a unique set of experiences, with each experience adding some soft of contribution to their bounds and the rate of feeling fade. #TBC