Siyuan Tu

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But it has proven very difficult to artificially satisfy even the most basic human pleasures. Who wants a birthday cake made with aspartame? Who would rather have a tanning bed than a sunny day? Who prefers to watch bots play chess? You can view high-res images of the Mona Lisa anytime you want, and yet people will still pay to fly to Paris and shove through crowds just to get a glimpse of the real thing.

I think there is a deep truth here: human desires are complex and multidimensional, and this makes them both hard to quench and hard to hack. That tinge of discontent that haunts even the happiest people, that bottomless hunger for more even among plenty—those are evolutionary defense mechanisms. If we were easier to please, we wouldn’t have made it this far. We would have gorged ourselves to death as soon as we figured out how to cultivate sugarcane.