Romashka comments on The Cognitive Costs to Doing Things - Less Wrong
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Conversely, one can use an adrenaline rush from a really disconcerting event to up and do something "merely disturbing" afterwards.
I once had to check whether a habitat we monitored was completely turned into a construction site. It was unpleasant, and I kept postponing it, because 1) the place I remembered of old was rather wild, considering it lied at the edge of a city, and the difference was stark - I literally felt my feet burn, 2) the wardens had dogs, and 3) there was a slight time cost.
However, one day I was coming home from college and there was a red-faced man of middle age lying on the sidewalk with an unfocused leer on his face and a cut on his wrist, with a blob of drying blood on it. People walked around him, and kioskers threw him rather angry glances. I thought then that perhaps he had tried to cut himself to bleed to death, but was too drunk for it, and that I probably should do something about it. So I bought two cups of cocoa and bothered him into going to sit on a bench nearby, and then, well, had the most objectively hilarious conversation with a man in my whole life, thinking all the time fifty meters to the underground - hit him with my bag - gotta scream really loud - why aren't we drinking etc. Then, thankfully, he rambled off to the underground, and I went on to my bus stop. I could fly. Checking out that blasted construction site was a lark.