“What has happened in the modern world is that we have developed so many levers to control our experience that we have become addicted to control itself. So we are constantly optimizing, right? We're relationship maxing, we're career maxing, we're looks maxing, we're counting our steps, our sleep, our accomplishments, our calories, other people.”

…the world. Now, updating the world takes an interesting form. It's a way of further foraging and saying if maybe I need to collect more data. It's a way of redirecting our attention so that now we're attending to things that match with our mental model. But the bottom line is that we're constantly seeking to assert control and reduce uncertainty. And it's adaptive and it's what's kept us alive. What has happened in the modern world is that we have developed so many levers to control our experience that we have become addicted to control itself. So we are constantly optimizing, right? We're relationship maxing, we're career maxing, we're looks maxing, we're counting our steps, our sleep, our accomplishments, our calories, other people. We're trying to engineer perfection and get the perfect mental model of the world to the point where our efforts to exert control are now quite divorced from what is actually happening in the world. And addiction is the quintessential example of that. Through my addictive behaviors, I can create this world within a world where my focus narrows, everything else falls away. I've simplified things.…