The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

by Thomas Metzinger

We are driven to seek pleasure and joy, to avoid pain and depression. The hedonic treadmill is the motor that nature invented to keep the organism running. We can recognize this structure in ourselves, but we will never be able to escape it. We are this structure.

From a traditional evolutionary perspective, philosophical pessimism is a maladaptation.

The central claim of this book is that the conscious experience of being a self emerges because a large portion of the self-model in your brain is, as philosophers would say, transparent.