Yep, I'm with you. I think this "suffering is necessary" point Huang is making is his weakest point. Maybe a more nuanced version of it that I think would be a stronger point is that there is a "sweet spot" of life challenges - not too much, but also not too little - that increase the odds of positive outcomes for people.
But as you say, people who experience extreme suffering are much more likely to experience a lifetime of profound difficulty than to become a great auteur, entrepreneur, or leader.
The only universal truth is that no thruths are universal. And I think “suffering builds character” in this and its other forms is a perfect example. Yes, extreme suffering will cause long term problems. And yet at the same time, we’re all probably familiar with or know someone who experienced “the gifted student wall” where their natural talent was good enough to carry them to success, right up until the point it wasn’t and they suffered a major setback because they’d never built up the skills or resiliency to overcome that obstacle.
Like you said there is probably some sweet spot that we should try to hit. I suppose the hard part is there’s no good way to know how much suffering society should allow or encourage, and probably more importantly no good mechanism by which we can turn off suffering once you’ve “had enough”
Even (maybe especially) extreme suffering can create resilience - I suspect it’s not optimal for happiness, but that’s not what this is about. This is about resilience.
A less resilient person may have a perfectly happy and content life doing things that aren’t as hard, that’s true of most people.
But someone who has something extreme happen to them will have a way higher fucking bar for bad. If you lost your family in war the stress of a startup is nothing to you.
> If you lost your family in war the stress of a startup is nothing to you.
But respectfully this isn’t really how PTSD works. It seems intuitive to say this, but in reality, stressful situations will often trigger an exaggerated flight or fight response than is warranted due to changes in the brain’s structure, especially the hippocampus. Repeated, prolonged trauma makes the person even less resilient, not more so.
But not everyone develops PTSD precisely because they have innate resilience - at least that's how the theory goes. The resilience doesn't come from the trauma.
But as you say, people who experience extreme suffering are much more likely to experience a lifetime of profound difficulty than to become a great auteur, entrepreneur, or leader.