Jacob Wood
Objective
Investigate ways to quantify an "experiential neutral point", the threshold at which life is worth experiencing.
  1. Collecting the Data
  2. Exploring the Data
  3. Next Steps
  4. Ingredients

Collecting the Data

I went through a few iterations of surveys over time. They were all written in Guided Track and participants were recruited through Positly, both fantastic platforms.

In general, surveys are framed around 3 questions:

Guided Track Survey Guided Track Code n Data Questions
link np_survey_5.txt 106 np_data_5.csv How satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?

How enjoyable is your life as a whole these days?

Imagine I gave you a "REPLAY YESTERDAY" button. When pressed, this button would cause you to be instantly transported back in time to yesterday morning. You would live the day again exactly the same as you did the first time. You would have no recollection of pressing the button. *Would you press this button to replay yesterday?*

Imagine I gave you a "SKIP TOMORROW" button. When pressed, this button would cause you to be instantly transported 24 hours into the future. You still do all the things you would normally do (so nobody else can tell any difference), and remember the day normally, you just don't experience it. Afterwards, you forget you pressed the button. *Would you press this button to skip tomorrow?*
link np_survey_4.txt 704 np_data_4.csv How satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?

How enjoyable is your life as a whole these days?

Imagine I gave you a "SKIP TOMORROW" button. When pressed, this button would cause you to be instantly transported 24 hours into the future. You still do all the things you would normally do (so nobody else can tell any difference), and remember the day normally, you just don't experience it. Afterwards, you forget you pressed the button. *Would you press this button to skip tomorrow?*
link np_survey_3.txt 113 np_data_3.csv How satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?

How enjoyable is your life as a whole these days?

How enjoyable do you expect tomorrow to be?

Imagine I gave you a "SKIP TOMORROW" button. When pressed, this button would cause you to be instantly transported 24 hours into the future. You still do all the things you would normally do (so nobody else can tell any difference), and remember the day normally, you just don't experience it. Would you press this button to skip tomorrow?

What level of expected enjoyment do you think would be your threshold for pressing the button?
link np_survey_2.txt 117 np_data_2.csv How satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?

How enjoyable is your life as a whole these days?

Imagine I gave you a "SKIP TODAY" button. When pressed, this button would cause you to be instantly transported 24 hours into the future. You still do all the things you would normally do, and remember the day normally, you just don't experience it. In a typical week how many times would you use the button?
link np_survey_1.txt 100 np_data_1.csv If you could press a button to skip tomorrow, would you? Assume you still complete all the things you would normally complete, and remember the day normally, you just don't experience it.

How satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?

How enjoyable is your life these days?

Exploring the Data

Our median (modal*) user:

Some initial non-intuitive correlations:

The fraction of people that would skip tomorrow starts around 40% at the low enjoyment end and decreases relatively linearly to around 5% at a 10/10.

One way of interpreting this data is that at no point on the enjoyment scale is life worth skipping, because at no point do the majority of people answer "yes" to the question of skipping tomorrow.

Another way of interpreting this data is that each point traversed on the enjoyment scale nets a (40%-5%) / 10 = 3.5% increase in the likelihood of wanting to experience tomorrow. Naively, this might be interpreted as saying that buying 29 points in life enjoyment is equivalent, in expectation, of buying one

Next Steps

Ingredients