I landed on “gear, not stuff.” Stuff is a possession for the sake of

So, yeah, we all care and are all affected by cues around our social rank and influence. But most of us suppress the revolutionary, Che Guevarra-like instinct this can incite. Instead, we feign that we’re above the subtle status reminders we face every day. We soothe ourselves and undercut the high-status people by telling ourselves things like,

The point of a game is to enter into a small world that is an escape from our everyday life. It’s a challenging but captivating diversion. We can’t predict if we’ll win. We play games, as the philosopher Bernard Suits explained, to voluntarily take on unnecessary obstacles for the sake of maybe overcoming them.

The more resources we could get, the more we could fuel the development of our amazing brains. The more our amazing brains developed, the more we could figure out how to explore new territories. This might be why still today walking while paying open attention to the world can enhance creativity, concentration, and understanding.

Benedict even taught that self-denial and going with too little often stirs up pride, a snooty “holier than thou” attitude.

Nguyen explained that discovering what we think is the right information feels good. The philosopher Alison Gopnik went as far as calling it an “intellectual orgasm.” That’s a line that only someone who thinks for a living could utter, but she was getting to something important. The “aha” moment feels good, like a jackpot. Confusion, on the other

Addiction is not a choice. Instead, it’s a summation of repeated choices that make a different choice harder to make for environmental, biological, and historical reasons. It’s deep learning.

We prefer metrics. So our attention and values naturally shift toward what’s easily measurable at scale and away from all these other, more complicated things that matter more.”

Second, the rewards could stop trickling in.