Boons and banes

post by dkl9 · 2024-09-23T06:18:38.335Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

This is a link post for https://dkl9.net/essays/boon_bane.html

Contents

  Changes in banes are bigger
  Boons are more useful to find
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Doing any of these will, usually, improve your health and/or happiness:

• stay sober
• ingest protein
• exert creative effort
• sleep enough
• wash your hands
• shave your head
• avoid blue light at night
• maintain peace

Some of those are positive actions — you pursue something specific, as with protein, effort, or sleep. Some are negative actions — you remove something specific. You stay sober by removing alcohol, hygienic by removing pathogens, and peaceful by removing war.

Any good act is good in one of two ways. You can increase something helpful — a "boon" — by pursuing it specifically. Or you can decrease something harmful — a "bane" — by removing it or finding other things to do.

That is, something good can be a boon or the absence of a bane. Inversely, something bad can be a bane or the absence of a boon.

Boon	Anti-boon	Bane	Anti-bane
Protein	Eating only fruit	Alcohol	Sobriety
Creative effort	Constant mindless consumption	Pathogens	Hygiene
Sleep	Staying up all night	Excess hair	Head-shaving
Water	Dry fasting except saltines	Blue night-light	Redshift
Exercise	Sedentary life	War	Peace

In the cases above, it's obvious which pair of opposites is boon/anti-boon, and which is anti-bane/bane. Some other cases are less obvious — I leave these for you to figure out:

• eating dairy versus eating vegetables (for their effects on constipation)
• scrolling on social media versus concentration

This dichotomy has implications beyond just the fun of categories.

Changes in banes are bigger

All but the most anomalous diets give dozens of grams of protein per day. Presumably, you already sleep at night, for at least six hours, usually, and ingest at least half the recommended amount of water. But adding another 20% to any of those — another 15 grams of protein, another hour or two of sleep, another cup of water — only makes a notable difference in results for limited cases.

However, adding to a bane on the same scale is much more likely to have clear effects. Suddenly drinking a cup of wine would make someone halfway drunk. Pathogens can incapacitate someone for days, starting from as little as it takes to get them sick. The light of a single computer monitor can keep one up for multiple hours.

There's a deeper reason for this. Much of macroscopic life, especially our perception, works logarithmically. The size of an effect mainly depends on how big the change is proportional to the starting point. You're already getting a substantial amount of many boons, and close to zero of many banes. The same absolute change has a smaller effect when it's boons that change.

Boons are more useful to find

Positives are more specific than negatives. Having found a boon deficiency, you can quickly figure out how to correct for it, and you usually have several options. Need creative effort? Compose a poem; build a robot. Need sleep? Replace what you would do this evening with going to bed earlier. Need exercise? Go running; lift a barbell.

To fix an excess of a bane, you must figure out where it's coming from, cut it off at the source, and find something to replace it, lest it return to fill the void. Drunk too often? Quit going to bars; figure out new ways to have fun. Violently arguing too much? Get away from angry people; find healthier exciting things to think about.

Seek enough boons and they could displace banes from your capacity, helping you twice over. Replace a bane carelessly and its substitute may be another bane, leaving you back where you started.

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