Neuroscience

Just over a year ago, on a visit to one of the world’s most prestigious research institutes, I challenged researchers there to account for intelligent human behaviour without reference to any aspect of the IP metaphor. They couldn’t do it

Updated v2: Self-Regulation Cheat Sheet 🤓 https://t.co/d6pudBoN1V

Learned helplessness, the failure to escape shock induced by uncontrollable aversive events, was discovered half a century ago. Seligman and Maier (1967) theorized that animals learned that outcomes were independent of their responses—that nothing they did mattered – and that this learning undermined trying to escape. The mechanism of learned... See more

So here is the take-home lesson. We have to seek novelty, because this is what lays down new memories in the brain.

Together, wanting and liking encourage us to pursue rewards. But these sensations can also stand alone, creating situations where you might know that you enjoy something but don’t want to go after it, or where you might have a strong desire for something that you don’t get much pleasure from.