CONCEPT
Adaptation Energy
Selye's late-career concept that organisms possess a finite lifetime reserve of capacity to respond to demand — partially replenished by recovery, never fully restored, permanently diminished by each cycle of stress.
Adaptation energy is Selye's most controversial and most consequential concept: the proposition that each organism begins life with a finite supply of capacity to respond to novel challenges, and that this supply depletes across a lifetime in proportion to the demands placed on it. Recovery replenishes the reserve partially but never completely; the remainder is permanent loss visible in accumulated wear on the endocrine, cardiovascular, and neural stress-response systems. The concept is theoretical rather than directly measurable — adaptation energy corresponds to no single molecule — but the empirical pattern it describes is not in dispute: organisms lose adaptive capacity over time, and the loss is accelerated by stress. The implications for the AI moment are severe. The transition of 2025 arrived in the context of a population already depleted by the pandemic, economic disruption, and algorithmic stress, and the AI demand draws from reserves already significantly reduced.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Selye formalized the concept in his later writings, particularly