Note: survivorship bias warning. We don't know how many counterfactual lsusr clones died or were permanently disabled after pushing too hard.

Note 2: privilege bias warning. Lsusr doesn't mention how much of a financial and social safety net he had, but given he had a failed startup and tried again implies way more Maslow level 0-2 stability than most people.

I note that Alkjash's post

• had a structured model with gears
• told me something about why the world is the way it is
• provided mental techniques to counter a problem

I don't think this post did any of these things. At least I didn't extract them if they were there.

I'm not saying the message here is wrong or that a post like this couldn't provide those three things. I just think this post didn't achieve that.

In what way is pain the unit of effort?

What are people missing about the world when they don't see this?

What TAPs can we implement in light of these things?

They say imitation is the highest praise so thanks for writing this. :D 

A substantial chunk of my heart identifies with this post, but what I think it's pointing to is that pain can be a reasonable measure for a certain kind of effort. The difference between this post and mine feels close to the difference between making a desperate effort and making an extraordinary effort [? · GW]. 

When I imagine making a desperate effort, it feels like exactly what your post describes: pushing my body to the point of physical exhaustion and reaching a level of achievement I didn't think possible. When I imagine making an extraordinary effort, I see instead: sitting back in an armchair and surreptitiously saving the world by writing a fanfiction while following my heart's desire. Reality doesn't care how much pain you're in. Perhaps you can tell by my language, but the latter is what I aspire to. 

If you live in a world where nobody is trying and you find in yourself the ability to try in one particular way by making a desperate effort, your body might learn that this is the only way to try. I would offer that if you sat back and did only things that came easily, you might learn an altogether different way of trying with all the extra slack that saves you.

(Trigger Warning: Passing mention of a suicide)

I studied Kung Fu and Muai Thai. Nothing is quite like being in a ring for the first time. It's like that scene in Rush Hour where Chris tucker gets hit in the face and then says, "Now which one of you motherfuckers just hit me?"

I'm 43 now. Then I was 17. In my Muai Thai class here were some who fought in the ring, and more who did not. However, the guys who stayed with it and did ring fighting sometimes have certain patterns. Like setting an alarm for 20 minutes early, taking 2 or 3 advils or aleves, then waking up with the regular alarm, taking another one, maybe smoking some pot with it. Fortunately I started seeing this trend by the time I was 22 and shifted to Kung Fu.

Kung Fu is odd in that there are disciplines (Isshen Ru Boxing comes to mind) that are about as bad. I think Muscle-Tendon Changing classic is bad for you, especially if you're bruising yourself a lot in the process. And one of my Kung Fu teachers trained a guy by blindfolding him and beating him up for six weeks (not medical advice). He did get good very fast. He got what some people don't get after five years. He moved before the kick happened.

However, I also saw someone get hit in the knee and have serious problems pretty much forever. People romanticize 'do or die' and think they will succeed at the lightening bolt path. More don't, and plenty who are smarter, faster, dumber, more XX than you have failed.

Not everyone gets there, and that same guy who got very good at Kung Fu after being blindfolded and beaten up later killed himself. He was very hard on himself. Maybe the teacher just reflected that to him.

Before he died, he and I developed another method of teaching, which got people most of what you get in the first several ring fights, and most of what he got from blindfolded fighting practice, but with far less pain. We put on blindfolds and limited strikes to slaps and shoves. Of course, people still got hurt, but not like the ring, and we avoided some twisting motions on the victims (not medical advice). Pain itself is not such a good teacher. Pain, per se, is not any indicator of gain, even where the two seem closely associated.

In the end, I am saying there is usually a better way to do it. Those hard methods work, but they probably aren't necessary. That which doesn't kill you might still kill you later on, or it might just do damage, even if your record says 11-0-0 or whatever. And the guy with no record might actually be better, and the better thing is not fighting at all.

Anyway, if there's a fight, something has gone horribly wrong that anyone with any sensitivity (or even common sense) could have almost certainly avoided. Or it's an honor duel. A far better warrior will avoid all of it!

So the story goes: "A lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art.

“My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house.

“My elder brother cures sickness when it is still extremely minute, so his name gets around only in his own neighborhood.

The well-known healer replied, “I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords.”

A great example of advice reversal. 

FWIW I suspect I personally need this advice more than alkjash's advice. I've always had a feeling that most people are doing it wrong (e.g. managers who are always working late instead of learning to delegate) but I'm conscious that I want to be better at committing to things and seeing them through even if they're hard (or just inconvenient!).

I know the title is based on alkjash, but I'm not sure it really captures the idea of the post. A lot of your anecdotes are more about doing a lot of things and pushing oneself to her limits than about pain.

The way I see it, this is more a post about when giving up is not the right choice, which is pretty useful. But it's not the defense of pain in effort that I expected from the title.

"Hyped up on natural amphetamines" sounds a lot like mania, a pathological state known for leaving its "sufferers" with extremely poor judgment. High doses of actual stimulants such as amphetamines or cocaine also tend to produce an illusion of high productivity rather than the real thing; you can end up writing pages and pages of what feels like brilliant insights but is actually complete nonsense.

I assumed this was some kind of pastiche of the judgy-overarchiever trope, and I was quite entertained under that reading. But now I've come to the comments and everyone seems to interpret the post earnestly. I'm confused.

there are posts with good titles, when i understand the concept from the title and expect the post to elaborate. i find this post in the links in Pain is Not The Unit of Effort, and i though i knew what i will see. i was wrong.

i expected to read post with examples about the places when pain actually pay off. pain is orthogonal to success, and it's mean that sometimes you will need pain to success, and i expected to see list of such examples. only part 2 was example of that. part 1 and 3 was examples of things that are not pain, and part 4 just left me bewildered. part 5 sounds like counter-argument to me. and the Antidotes sounds like counter-arguments too. they look to me like examples of dysfunctionality, exactly the attitude that the original post come against. 

i will address part 4 specifically as this is the part i find most strange and confusing.

Ye Xiu strategy sounds to me clearly inferior, like signal you will always cooperate on the Prisoner Dilemma - you basically incentivize people to defect against you. why it's a good thing?

"That wasn't a real disaster." sounds like True Scotsman, moreover, in defining disaster as "You simply die" you make this word useless. categories exist to point on cluster of things. "everything" and "the empty set" are both useless categories. why would you want to take useful word and render it useless? <very bad things that worth to guard against> sounds like good category to me.

if you recover in less the a minute from startup fail, you don't sound surprised enough for the disparity between your map and territory. emotions serve purposes - like making you try hard to avoid this outcome. and not "hard" as throwing willpower on it, but "hard" as dedicating per-planing and perception and all your ability to think. if you don't know your start up will fail, you should be surprised, if you do, you should do something to prevent it. also, Chesterton's Fence. human emotions exist for a reason, and i deeply suspect ideologies that glorified emotionless. it's like throwing away really useful tool that was optimized by the blind goddess of evolution. you sure you can do better? really sure?

you say "I'm still in the game." and i think about the time i understood the problem with the social script of "don't give up". sometimes, it's bad to stay. WHY do you think it's good to stay? why you judge the one leaving the startup world bad thing and you remaining good thing? what are the criteria of the judgment?

part of my problem with glorify-pain culture is it anti-reflection, it's all "go forward in full force" and not 'let's stop and evaluate the options and see what option is best".

you give examples but not reasons it was worth it, or that it was even good thing. and i have the feeling there are unsaid something this post try to reflect, but i can't imagine what person will be persuaded by post like that, what kind of algorithm can create that post. ITT total failure on my part.

maybe i should write the post i expected to find here. the problem? i don't have enough real-world examples for that.