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opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability
Evolution drilled our attraction to the scarcity loop into our head.
It was an opportunity to survive and better our lives, with unpredictable rewards, that we quickly repeated.
Once we know something is pleasurable or rewarding, dopamine is primarily released when we’re pursuing and anticipating receiving that pleasurable thing, not when we’re actually receiving the pleasurable thing.
all animals, including humans, want a reward infinitely more if we aren’t sure we’ll get it. If it’s received unpredictably. Unpredictability makes us obsessive and far more likely to quickly repeat the behavior.
Addiction is chronically seeking a reward despite negative consequences.
Addiction, in other words, is a learned behavior that once worked well but begins to backfire.
Creativity and efficiency bloom under scarcity.
But scarcity brain evolved other elegant machinery to make the most challenging searches the most rewarding.
I’ve developed a motto I now use for any tribulations I face: “No problem, no story.” Every story has a complication. A point where unplanned events make our life uncertain and challenging. If we shy away or pay to eliminate those, we remove challenge and gain certainty. But we also learn less about ourselves and don’t become the hero of our own journey.
the “what is it” reflex
exploration is critical to our development as humans.
Tommy Blanchard, a researcher at the Harvard Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, referred to humans as “informavores: creatures that search for and digest information, just like carnivores hunt and eat meat.”
Scientists have even discovered a gene, called DRD4-7R, that is linked to exploration and a willingness to take risks. Scientists have nicknamed it the “wanderlust gene.”
Curiosity and exploration are vital to the human spirit.”
information hits a rate of diminishing returns. When we know nothing, adding information helps us make better decisions. But if we continue piling on information, we hit “information overload.” At this tipping point, more information usually leads to worse decisions. The more complex information we deal with, the sooner we hit the tipping point.
online brain. They say that the internet has altered our minds in three ways. First, it hurt our ability to focus.
The second effect of online brain is that we’ve off-loaded some of our memory to the cloud.
this can make it harder for us to make connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information. It’s as if we don’t have access to the pieces we need to fill the puzzle. Instead of the puzzle pieces all being out on the table, some are in one room, others are in another.
The study suggests that if we want to better remember information, searching for it more labor intensively,
Just as slow food has advantages over fast food, slow information is often better than fast information.
the internet is changing social ...
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But this “aha!” feeling calls off the search before we discover flaws in the information.
We rarely enter completely unknown worlds anymore. Like, I can’t do anything without googling it first.
Each time we off-load our quest and remove effortful exploration, we quit the journey.
He called this “proportion.” It’s the recognition that every human has different needs and temperaments. Most religions preach moderation or the middle path. But Benedict understood that “moderation” is different for everyone. Enough for one person might be too much for another might be too little for another.
our common tragedy isn’t that we can’t find happiness. It’s that we look for it in all the wrong places.
This regimen of finding and doing with enough, Benedict taught, allows us to focus on what truly matters: time where we discover that something larger than ourselves isn’t absent from everyday life. Benedict believed we find higher purpose and satisfaction in helping others, experiencing and making creative works, learning new things, balancing time in solitude and with others, and awareness in nature. And, most important, contemplating whatever big eternal mystery we think is the Big Eternal Mystery and letting that guide us.
A manual hobby can create an abundance loop because it’s active and rewarding in a way that produces something tangible.
Occasional deprivation makes the ordinary feel extraordinary.
I.e. summers in Minnesota after 6 months of winter.
The Dalai Lama said, “To seek solitude like a wild animal. That is my only ambition.” He argues that we need solitude to truly understand and change ourselves.
Uninfluenced time alone allows us to strip away outside noise and ask the deeper questions. It might even lead us to think differently. Better.
scientists studied groups they called “unsocial.” These people don’t have social anxiety or other fears and just prefer being alone. Give them a choice between going to a party or spending the evening home alone with a good book, and they’ll take the party of one, thank you very much. The scientists found that these people scored highest in creativity and seemed to be just as happy as their social counterparts.
Our well-being seems to be determined not by any one end point but by a rolling average of our actions. And also a willingness to explore our innermost selves rather than scramble after the next thing we think will make us happy. Spirituality counters what scarcity brain pushes us into and asks us to do the deep work.
proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness.”
You learn to live more meaningfully when you can die at any moment.”
a person stuck in a scarcity loop only stops for three reasons: the opportunity goes away, the rewards stop trickling in, or the repetition slows down.
We can determine for ourselves what we want the rewards of a behavior to be.
Joseph Campbell explained the story like this: The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Maybe it’s to improve as a human as you hammer. To callous your hands, build endurance, and improve your craft of life and living it.
“You risk so much by hesitating to fling yourself into the abyss.”
