If humans experience pain and pleasure on a 1-10 scale, then hyperpleasures are those activities which take us “off the scale,” so to speak. They give us experiences that make us feel like a 20, 30, 100, 1,000, and so on. The particular number is arbitrary, of course, but the principle remains — these are pleasures that go far beyond the ordinary range of enjoyment, principally by removing those discomforts we experience in our ordinary pleasures. Hyperpleasures, then, are not new. Humans have been enjoying drugs and alcohol for the entirety of our written history. Plenty of people from before the modern era have known what it’s like to feel like a 20, 30, 100, or 1,000. But there’s something that IS new.