Stress is Good
from btrmt. lectures Hosted by Dorian
Everyone’s convinced stress is this outdated evolutionary technology—poorly calibrated to modern life, something to avoid at all costs. The story goes that it evolved to help us run from tigers, but now it’s just triggered by email notifications. This is nonsense. Stress is the only thing that gets us to perform at all. It’s the most valuable biological technology we have. This lecture walks through the Yerkes-Dodson Law—a simple, 100-year-old model that explains how stress actually works, why we need it, and how to use it well. Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/stress-is-good-lecture And the pieces it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/stress-is-good, https://btr.mt/analects/yerkes-dodson-bias-vs-noise, https://btr.mt/analects/the-amygdala-is-not-the-fear-centre. Stuff I mentioned: The Atlantic Article, demonstrating the typical approach to stress Sapolsky’s book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers Yerkes Dodson Law Vartinian et al. (2020), Goldfarb et al. (2017), Lenow et al. (2017) or this commentary on the relationship between low stress and cognitive flexibility Eustress (Hans Seyle, 1976). More modern developments would be Cognitive Appraisal Models and Attribution Theory Chronic Stress and Allostatic Load Animals First Giving in to Fight or Flight Related stuff: The Betterment article that inspired this More on stress and cognitive flexibility Why the amygdala doesn’t work the way you think
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Everyone's convinced stress is this outdated evolutionary technology—poorly calibrated to modern life, something to avoid at all costs. The story goes that it evolved to help us run from tigers, but now it's just triggered by email notifications. This is nonsense. Stress is the only thing that gets us to perform at all. It's the most valuable biological technology we have. This lecture walks through the Yerkes-Dodson Law—a simple, 100-year-old model that explains how stress actually works, why we need it, and how to use it well.
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