The Molecule of More – Book Notes

Olivier Chabot|August 5, 2022|Advice To Myself, Book Notes, Notes, Productivity
Reading Time: 35 minutes
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The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human RaceThe Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race by Daniel Z. Lieberman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I’ve read in a while. It explained much of my behaviour from a neuroscience perspective. It helped me feel self-compassion through better understanding. The chapter on love was particularly insightful. Much wisdom and actionable advice are to be found.

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“It’s sensory reality and abstract thought working together that unlocks the brain’s full potential. Operating at its peak performance, it becomes capable of producing not only happiness and satisfaction, not only wealth and knowledge, but a rich mixture of sensory experience and wise understanding, a mixture that can set us down the path toward a more balanced way of being human.”

DANIEL Z. LIEBERMAN & MICHAEL E. LONG – THE MOLECULE OF MORE

Main Takeaways

  1. Dopamine responded not to reward, but to reward prediction error: the actual reward minus the expected reward.
    • Low expectations combined with intensely experiencing the present moment leads to reward prediction error which triggers dopamine.
    • “In scientific terms, when the dopamine system is at rest, it fires at a leisurely three to five times per second. When it’s excited, it zooms up to twenty to thirty times per second. When an expected reward fails to materialize, the dopamine firing rate drops to zero, and that feels terrible.”
    • “What dopamine loves more than anything else is reward prediction error, which, as we have discussed, is the discovery that something is better than we had anticipated it would be. Paradoxically, dopamine does everything in its power to avoid such incorrect forecasts. Reward prediction error feels great because your dopamine circuits get excited over the fact that there is something new and unexpected to make your life better. But being surprised by an unexpected new resource means the resource isn’t being fully exploited. So dopamine makes sure the surprise that felt so good will never be a surprise again. Dopamine extinguishes its own pleasure. It’s frustrating, but it’s the best way to keep us alive. What can we do to keep the surprises coming?”
    • Connects with Buddhism’s notion of the Four Noble Truths. where the second Truth claims that the cause of suffering is desire and ignorance (faulty mental models). Craving and aversion lie at the root of suffering.
    • Also connects with Mo Gawdat’s happiness equation: Happiness >= Events – Expectations
  2. There is a tradeoff between anticipation and satisfaction.
    • “Dopamine is not meant to be an enduring reservoir of joy. By shaping the brain to make surprising events predictable, dopamine maximizes resources, as it is supposed to do, but in the process, by eliminating surprise and extinguishing reward-prediction error, it suppresses its own activity.”
    • “From dopamine’s point of view, having things is uninteresting. It’s only getting things that matters.”
    • “The surge of dopamine feels good, but it’s different from a surge of H&N pleasure, which is a surge of satisfaction. And that difference is key: the dopamine surge triggered by winning leaves us wanting more.”
  3. Intelligence is multifaceted. It’s not clear which kind is more important.
    • “An IQ test measures a person’s ability to build imaginary models based on past experiences, and then use those models to predict what will happen in the future. Control dopamine plays a large role.”
    • “However, there are other ways to define intelligence, such as the ability to make good day-to-day decisions. For this type of mental activity emotions (H&N) are essential. Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California and the author of Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, notes that most decisions cannot be approached in a purely rational way.”
    • “A high score on an IQ test may be a good predictor of academic success, but for a happy life, emotional sophistication may be more important.”
  4. Culture is influenced by genetics and dopamine levels.
    • “There are a limited number of highly dopaminergic people in the world, so one country’s gain is another country’s loss. Many American immigrants came from Europe, a migration that boosted the dopaminergic gene pool in the United States, leaving Europe with a residual population more likely to take an H&N approach to life.”
    • “Among populations that remained near their origins, fewer people had a long DRD4 allele compared to those who migrated farther away.”
    • Connects with the Omega Principle from the Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century.
  5. “We identify with our dopamine. In our minds, we are dopamine.”
    1. “Ask a philosopher what is the essence of humanity, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he said it was free will. The essence of humanity is our ability to move beyond instinct, to go beyond automatic reactions to our environment. It’s the ability to weigh options, to consider higher concepts such as values and principles, and then to make a deliberate choice about how to maximize what we believe is good—whether it’s love, money, or the ennobling of the soul. That’s dopamine.”
    2. “Even a future one second away is unreal. It is only the stark facts of the present that are real, facts that must be accepted exactly as they are, facts that cannot be modified by a hair’s breadth to suit our needs. This is the world of reality. The future, where dopaminergic creatures live their lives, is a world of phantoms.”
  6. Tactics for harmony and balance:
    • “Mastery is the point at which dopamine bows to H&N.”
      • Transcending the game completely. Having “enough” money, a satisfying relationship, a martial art so you don’t need to fight, a coherent worldview so you feel the need to argue.
    • “Reality is the richest source of the unexpected.”
    • Pick up a hobby.
    • Work with your hands.
    • Practice activities with strong camaraderie.
  7. What is happiness?
    • “It takes both dopamine and H&N to attain happiness, the state of being that the philosopher Aristotle considered to be the goal of all other goals.”
    • Is the dopamine thrill considered happiness? What about living according to your principles? What about living in the present moment and feeling completely satisfied?

Book Notes

Chapter 1: Love

Dopamine has a very specific job: maximizing resources that will be available to us in the future; the pursuit of better things.

Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long – The Molecule of More
  • Dopamine
    • “But once the monkeys figured out that the light meant they were about to get food, the “surprise” they felt came exclusively from the appearance of the light, not from the food. From that, a new hypothesis arose: dopamine activity is not a marker of pleasure. It is a reaction to the unexpected—to possibility and anticipation.”
    • “The scientists who studied this phenomenon named the buzz we get from novelty reward prediction error, and it means just what the name says. We constantly make predictions about what’s coming next, from what time we can leave work, to how much money we expect to find when we check our balance at the ATM. When what happens is better than what we expect, it is literally an error in our forecast of the future: Maybe we get to leave work early, or we find a hundred dollars more in checking than we expected. That happy error is what launches dopamine into action. It’s not the extra time or the extra money themselves. It’s the thrill of the unexpected good news.”
    • “In fact, the mere possibility of a reward prediction error is enough for dopamine to swing into action.”
    • “That’s dopamine taking charge, and it produces a feeling different from enjoying how something tastes, feels, or looks. It’s the pleasure of anticipation—the possibility of something unfamiliar and better.”
    • “Then Skinner tried something different. He set up an experiment in which the number of presses needed to release a pellet changed randomly. Now the pigeon never knew when the food would come. Every reward was unexpected. The birds became excited. They pecked faster. Something was spurring them on to greater efforts. Dopamine, the molecule of surprise, had been harnessed, and the scientific foundation of the slot machine was born.”
    • “From dopamine’s point of view, having things is uninteresting. It’s only getting things that matters.”
    • “Dopamine has no standard for good, and seeks no finish line. The dopamine circuits in the brain can be stimulated only by the possibility of whatever is shiny and new, never mind how perfect things are at the moment. The dopamine motto is “More.””
    • “Dopamine isn’t the pleasure molecule, after all. It’s the anticipation molecule.”
    • “Dopamine responded not to reward, but to reward prediction error: the actual reward minus the expected reward.”
  • Two opposing brain circuits
    • “Pettigrew found that the brain manages the external world by dividing it into separate regions, the peripersonal and the extrapersonal—basically, near and far. Peripersonal space includes whatever is in arm’s reach; things you can control right now by using your hands. This is the world of what’s real, right now. Extrapersonal space refers to everything else—whatever you can’t touch unless you move beyond your arm’s reach, whether it’s three feet or three million miles away. This is the realm of possibility.”
    • “When you look down, you look into the peripersonal space, and for that the brain is controlled by a host of chemicals concerned with experience in the here and now. But when the brain is engaged with the extrapersonal space, one chemical exercises more control than all the others, the chemical associated with anticipation and possibility: dopamine.”
    • “To enjoy the things we have, as opposed to the things that are only possible, our brains must transition from future-oriented dopamine to present-oriented chemicals, a collection of neurotransmitters we call the Here and Now molecules, or the H&Ns. Most people have heard of the H&Ns. They include serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins (your brain’s version of morphine), and a class of chemicals called endocannabinoids (your brain’s version of marijuana).”
  • The neuroscience of love
    • “It’s not easy to say farewell to the dopaminergic thrill of new partners and passionate longing, but the ability to do so is a sign of maturity, and a step toward long-lasting happiness.”
    • “Just as dopamine is the molecule of obsessive yearning, the chemicals most associated with long-term relationships are oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin is more active in women and vasopressin in men.”
    • “Vasopressin acted like a “good-husband hormone.” Dopamine does the opposite.”
    • “Human beings who have genes that produce high levels of dopamine have the highest number of sexual partners and the lowest age of first sexual intercourse.”
    • “This makes sense, since oxytocin and vasopressin suppress the release of testosterone. In a similar way, testosterone suppresses the release of oxytocin and vasopressin, which helps explain why men with naturally high quantities of testosterone in their blood are less likely to marry. Similarly, single men have more testosterone than married men. And if a man’s marriage becomes unstable, his vasopressin falls, and his testosterone goes up.”
    • “Do human beings require long-term companionship? There’s good evidence that the answer is yes.”
    • “On average, women have the highest levels of testosterone on days thirteen and fourteen of their menstrual cycle. That’s when the egg is released from the ovary, and they are most likely to get pregnant.”
    • “…sex is love on fast forward. Sex begins with desire, a dopaminergic phenomenon driven by the hormone testosterone. It continues with arousal, another forward-looking, dopaminergic experience. As physical contact begins, the brain shifts control to the H&Ns to deliver the pleasure of the sensory experience, mainly with the release of endorphins. The consummation of the act, orgasm, is almost entirely a here-and-now experience, with endorphins and other H&N neurotransmitters working together to shut down dopamine.”
    • “With few exceptions the brain’s response to orgasm was the same: dopamine off, H&N on.”
    • “Dopamine can always send us chasing phantoms.”
    • “Therefore, denying sexual satisfaction actually enhances passion—not necessarily forever, of course, and not without significant sacrifice, but the effect is real.”
    • “Passion deferred is passion sustained.”
    • “Dopamine tends to shut down once fantasy becomes reality, and dopamine is the driving chemical of romantic love. So what would raise dopamine more: agreeing to sex now, or keeping it in the future? Mom knows the answer, even if we’re only now learning why.”

Love that lasts shifts the emphasis from anticipation to experience; from the fantasy of anything being possible to engagement with reality and all its imperfections.

DANIEL Z. LIEBERMAN & MICHAEL E. LONG – THE MOLECULE OF MORE

Chapter 2: Drugs

  • “You want it . . . but will you like it?”
    • “Wanting and liking are produced by two different systems in the brain, so we often don’t like the things we want.”
    • Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness argues that we are terrible at predicting what we will enjoy in the future.
    • “Happiness is the polestar that guides our journey through life. When faced with a range of options, we choose the one that leads to the most happiness. Except we don’t. Our brains aren’t wired that way.”
    • “Wanting, or desire, flows from an evolutionarily old part of the brain deep inside the skull called the ventral tegmental area. It is rich in dopamine; in fact, it is one of the two main dopamine-producing regions.”
    • “scientific term for this circuit is the mesolimbic pathway, although it’s easier to simply call it the dopamine desire circuit (Figure 1).”
    • “The sensation of wanting is not a choice you make. It is a reaction to the things you encounter.”
    • “Dopamine is like the little old lady who always buys toilet paper. It doesn’t matter if she has a thousand rolls stacked in the pantry. Her attitude is you can never have too much toilet paper. So it is with dopamine, but instead of toilet paper, dopamine urges you to possess and accumulate anything that might help keep you alive.”
    • “Buyer’s remorse is the failure of the H&N experience to compensate for the loss of dopaminergic arousal.”
      • “Thus we see three possible solutions to buyer’s remorse: (1) chase the dopamine high by buying more, (2) avoid the dopamine crash by buying less, or (3) strengthen the ability to transition from dopamine desire to H&N liking.”
  • The role of dopamine
    • “The goal of the dopamine system is to predict the future and, when an unexpected reward occurs, to send a signal that says, “Pay attention. It’s time to learn something new about the world.””
    • “Dopamine is not meant to be an enduring reservoir of joy. By shaping the brain to make surprising events predictable, dopamine maximizes resources, as it is supposed to do, but in the process, by eliminating surprise and extinguishing reward-prediction error, it suppresses its own activity.”
    • “Dopamine circuits don’t process experience in the real world, only imaginary future possibilities.”
  • The neuroscience of drugs and addiction
    • “Like a guided missile, addictive drugs hit the desire circuit with an intense chemical blast. No natural behavior can match that. Not food, not sex, not anything.”
    • “If someone offered you a choice between a meal at a nice restaurant, even the nicest restaurant in town, and a check for million dollars, it’s ridiculous to think you’d choose dinner. That’s exactly how an addict feels when choosing between, say, paying the rent and buying crack. He chooses the one that will lead to the bigger dopamine hit. The euphoria of crack cocaine is bigger than just about any experience you can name. That’s rational from the point of view of desire dopamine, which is what drives the behavior of addicts.”
    • “Drugs are fundamentally different from natural dopamine triggers. When we’re starving, there’s nothing more motivating than getting food. But after we eat, the motivation for getting food declines because satiety circuits become active and shut down the desire circuit. There are checks and balances in place to keep everything stable. But there’s no satiety circuit for crack.”
    • “But addictive drugs are so powerful that they bypass the complicated circuitry of surprise and prediction and artificially ignite the dopamine system.”
    • “The ability to trigger dopamine in the desire circuit is what makes a drug addictive. Alcohol does it, heroin does it, cocaine does it, even marijuana does it.”
    • “Smoking cocaine as crack makes the process more efficient. Unlike the nasal mucosa, the surface area of the lungs is huge.”
    • “Unfortunately, smoking gets the drug into the brain about as fast as intravenous injection. Smoking also lacks the stigma associated with needles.”
    • “In scientific terms, when the dopamine system is at rest, it fires at a leisurely three to five times per second. When it’s excited, it zooms up to twenty to thirty times per second. When an expected reward fails to materialize, the dopamine firing rate drops to zero, and that feels terrible.”
    • “Drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine boost dopamine, and one result is an increase in self-efficacy, often to pathological levels.”
“The slope of the line indicates how quickly the level of the drug—in this case, alcohol—is rising in the brain. And the faster the rise, the more dopamine release, the more euphoria, and the more craving down the road.”
  • Difference between being high and intoxicated
    • “An evening of drinking feels best at the start. The level of alcohol is rising rapidly, and that feels good—it’s dopaminergic euphoria, directly related to how fast the alcohol gets into the brain. As the night goes on, though, the rate of increase slows down, and dopamine turns off. Euphoria gives way to drunkenness. The early stage of rising levels of alcohol might be characterized by increased energy, excitement, and pleasure. Intoxication, on the other hand, is characterized by sedation, poor coordination, slurred speech, and bad judgment.”
    • “The speed with which alcohol gets into the brain determines how high a drinker feels. It’s the total amount of alcohol consumed, regardless of whether it’s fast or slow, that determines the level of intoxication.”
    • “Therefore a mixed drink delivers a lot of alcohol fast, a burst of dopaminergic stimulation, as opposed to an evening of slowly increasing intoxication. This woman wanted elation, not inebriation, so of course the mixed drinks let her have a better time. She was getting a dopamine hit from a few cocktails that an evening of many beers couldn’t deliver.”
    • “People have this mistaken notion that you get high. What you’re really getting is relief from the low. This is why, even if an addict uses so much cocaine (or heroin or alcohol or marijuana) that it no longer leads to feeling high, he will continue to use it.”
  • Video Games
    • “In researching this problem, psychologist Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University found that nearly one in ten gamers ages eight to eighteen are addicted, causing family, social, school, or psychological damage because of their video game playing habits—a rate of addiction more than five times higher than that among gamblers, according to the National Research Council on Pathological Gambling.”
    • “If you needed to collect, say, seven gems, and every chest you opened contained a gem, it would be completely predictable. There would be no surprises, no reward prediction errors, no dopamine. If, on the other hand, you had to open a thousand chests to find a single gem, it would be so frustrating that everyone would give up. How does a game developer decide what percentage of chests should contain a gem? The answer is data. Lots of data.”
    • “So, what do the data tell us about the ideal portion of treasure chests that should contain gems? It turns out that 25 percent is the magic number. That’s what keeps people playing the longest. And there’s no reason why the other 75 percent should be empty. Game developers put low-value rewards in the non-gem chests so every single one will contain a surprise.”
    • “…maybe it’s something so powerful that it opens up completely new ways to interact with the game. Chatfield tells us that a reward like that should be found in only one out of a thousand treasure chests.”
  • Cigarettes
    • “Nicotine doesn’t make you high like marijuana or intoxicated like alcohol or wired up like speed. Some people say it makes them feel more relaxed or more alert, but really, the main thing it does is relieve cravings for itself. It’s the perfect circle.”
    • “The only point of smoking cigarettes is to get addicted so one can experience the pleasure of relieving the unpleasant feeling of craving, like a man who carries around a rock all day because it feels so good when he puts it down.”
    • “The level of H&N empathy for the developing fetus is so high that many women smokers jump right to the finish line and stop smoking without any conscious effort at all.”
  • The way out
    • “When it comes to addiction, easy access matters.”
    • “…fact, the most effective way to reduce the problems caused by these substances is to make it more difficult to get them.”
    • “The only thing that has been shown to work consistently is raising taxes on these products and placing limits on where and when they can be sold.”

Chapter 3: Domination

Dopamine wants more, and it doesn’t care how it gets it. Moral or immoral, dominant or submissive, it’s all the same to dopamine, as long as it leads to a better future.

DANIEL Z. LIEBERMAN & MICHAEL E. LONG – THE MOLECULE OF MORE
  • Neuroscience of Dopamine
    • “Think of rocket fuel that powers the main engines of a spaceship. The same fuel that pushes the rocket forward can be redirected to drive directional thrusters to steer the ship, as well as retrorockets to slow it down. It all depends on the path the fuel takes before it’s ignited—different functions, but all working together to get the spaceship to its destination. In a similar way, dopamine moving through different brain circuits yields different functions, too, and toward a common end: a relentless focus on enhancing the future.”
    • “Urges come from dopamine passing through the mesolimbic circuit, which we call the dopamine desire circuit. Calculation and planning—the means of dominating situations—come from the mesocortical circuit, which we will call the dopamine control circuit (Figure 3).”
    • “The dopamine system as a whole evolved to maximize future resources.”
  • Motivation
    • “When the required number of lever presses was increased from one to four, the normal rats pressed their levers nearly a thousand times over the course of 30 minutes. The dopamine-depleted rats weren’t as motivated; they pressed the lever only about six hundred times. When the requirement was increased to sixteen presses, the normal rats produced nearly two thousand presses, while the dopamine-depleted rats barely increased their presses at all. They were getting only one-quarter the number of treats, but they wouldn’t work harder. Finally, the requirement was bumped all the way up to sixty-four presses for a single Bioserve tablet. The normal rats managed about twenty-five hundred presses—more than one press per second for the entire 30 minutes. The dopamine-depleted rats didn’t increase their work at all. In fact, they pressed less than they had before. They simply gave up.”
    • “Hunger is an H&N phenomenon, an immediate experience, not an anticipatory, dopamine-driven one. Manipulate hunger, or some other sensory experience, and you affect the value of the reward earned through work. But it’s dopamine that makes the work possible at all: no dopamine, no effort.”
    • “The rats with normal dopamine went right for the Bioserve treats. They were willing to do a little bit of work to get something better. The dopamine-depleted rats, on the other hand, headed over to the easy-access lab chow.”
  • Submission & Dominance
    • “Chimpanzees observing a dominant display constrict themselves to appear as small as possible. On the other hand, when chimps respond to dominant displays with mirrored dominant displays, it usually marks the beginning of a long period of conflict that often ends in violence.”
    • “Participants who took the complementary posture not only liked the confederates more, they also felt more comfortable with them compared to the participants who mirrored the confederates.”
    • “Dominance triggered submission, and submission triggered dominance.”
    • “We unconsciously know when someone has a high expectation of success, and we get out of their way. We submit to their will—the overwhelming expression of their self-efficacy, powered by control dopamine. Our brains evolved this way for a good reason: it’s a bad idea to get into fights you can’t win.”
    • “How does a player or a team demonstrably inferior in skill and ability prevail over a superior opponent? It happens too often to attribute it only to luck. The answer is self-efficacy.”
    • “A relationship that is formed for the purpose of accomplishing a goal is called agentic, and it is orchestrated by dopamine. Affiliative relationships, on the other hand, are for the purpose of enjoying social interactions.”
    • “Although we think of domination as an active, even aggressive, activity, it doesn’t have to be. Dopamine doesn’t care how something is obtained. It just wants to get what it wants. So an agentic relationship can be entirely passive; for example, when a manager running an employee meeting gets the outcome he wants by keeping quiet.”
    • “In modern society, submissive behavior is often a sign of elevated social status—think of the strict adherence to manners, the focus on social customs, and, in conversation, the deference to others that is part and parcel of the behavior of what we might call “the elite.” The common name for this behavior is courtesy, a word derived from the word court, because it was the behavior originally adopted by the nobility. By contrast, dominant behavior, representing the opposite of courtesy, may stem from personal insecurity or an imperfect education.”
  • Impulsivity
    • “Dopamine control circuits and H&N circuits work in opposition, creating a balance that allows us to be humane toward others, while safeguarding our own survival. Since balance is essential, the brain often wires circuits in opposition. It works so well that sometimes there is even opposition wired into the same neurotransmitter system. The dopamine system operates in this way, so what happens when dopamine opposes dopamine?”
    • “The neurotransmitter dopamine is the source of desire (via the desire circuit) and tenacity (via the control circuit); the passion that points the way and the willpower that gets us there. Usually the two work together, but when desire fixates on things that will bring us harm in the long run—a third piece of cake, an extramarital affair, or an IV injection of heroin—dopaminergic willpower turns around, and does battle with its companion circuit.”
    • ““Resisting temptation seems to have produced a psychic cost, in the sense that afterward participants were more inclined to give up easily in the face of frustration.”
    • “Willpower is a limited resource.
  • ADHD
    • “What about people on the other end of the spectrum, people whose control dopamine circuits are weak? Their struggle with internal control manifests itself as impulsivity and difficulty keeping themselves focused on complex tasks. This problem can result in a familiar condition: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).2 Poor focus, concentration, and impulse control can severely interfere with their lives, and it can make them difficult to be with.”
    • “The most common treatments for ADHD are Ritalin and amphetamine, stimulants that boost dopamine in the brain.”
    • “If you strengthen the dopamine control circuit, it’s a lot easier to make wise decisions. On the other hand, if effective treatment is withheld, the weakness of the control circuit is not corrected. The desire circuit acts unopposed, increasing the likelihood of high-risk, pleasure-seeking behavior.”
    • “For a similar reason, overweight children are more likely to be hit by cars when they’re crossing the street. It’s not because they walk more slowly; it’s because they’re impulsive.”
    • “It’s important to remember that biology is not destiny. People whose control-dopamine systems are at one extreme or the other can change. People with ADHD can improve dramatically with medication, psychotherapy, and sometimes just time.”
  • Morality
    • “Dopamine doesn’t come equipped with a conscience. Rather, it is a source of cunning fed by desire. When it’s revved up, it suppresses feelings of guilt, which is an H&N emotion. It is capable of inspiring honorable effort, but also deceit and even violence in pursuit of the things it wants.”
    • “Dopamine pursues more, not morality; to dopamine, force and fraud are nothing more than tools.”
    • “Winners cheat for the same reason that drug addicts take drugs. The rush feels great, and withdrawal feels terrible.”
  • Winning
    • “The surge of dopamine feels good, but it’s different from a surge of H&N pleasure, which is a surge of satisfaction. And that difference is key: the dopamine surge triggered by winning leaves us wanting more. “
    • “Winning, like drugs, can be addictive. Yet the pleasurable rush that never satisfies is only half of the equation. The other half is the dopamine crash that feels so awful.”
    • “No one likes to lose, but it’s ten times as bad after you win.

Chapter 4: Creativity and Madness

Creativity is the brain at its best. Mental illness is the opposite.

DANIEL Z. LIEBERMAN & MICHAEL E. LONG – THE MOLECULE OF MORE
  • Salience
    • “One kind of salience is the quality of being unusual.”
    • “Another kind of salience is value.”
    • Things are salient when they are important to you, if they have the potential to impact your well-being, for good or for evil.”
    • “Things are salient if they have the potential to affect your future. Things are salient if they trigger desire dopamine. They broadcast the message, Wake up. Pay attention. Get excited. This is important.”
    • “Too much salience, or any salience at all at the wrong time, can create delusions.”
    • “Author and journalist Adam Hochschild described it this way: “When I’m in a country radically different from my own, I notice much more. It is as if I’ve taken a mind-altering drug that allows me to see things I would normally miss. I feel much more alive.” As the new environment becomes familiar, we adjust, and eventually master it.”
    • “The goal is to give just enough medication to block 60 to 80 percent of the dopamine receptors.”
    • “Being cut off from natural dopamine surges makes the world a dull place and makes it hard to find reasons to get out of bed in the morning.”
    • “Brain scans of people with schizophrenia show changes in that same area, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Maybe it’s because when we are being creative, we behave a little bit like a person with schizophrenia. We stop inhibiting aspects of reality that we had previously written off as unimportant, and we attach salience to things we once thought were irrelevant.”
  • Mental Models
    • “Models are imaginary representations of the world that we build in order to better understand it. In some ways model building is like latent inhibition. Models contain only the elements of the environment that the model builder believes are essential. Other details are discarded. That makes the world easier to comprehend and, later, to imagine a variety of ways it might be manipulated for maximum benefit. Model building isn’t something we’re aware of. The brain builds models automatically as we go about our day, and updates them as we learn new things.”
    • “Poor models of reality may be caused by many things: not having enough information, difficulty with abstract thinking, or the stubborn persistence of wrong assumptions. Such bad assumptions may be so harmful that they lead to psychiatric illnesses such as anxiety and depression.”
    • “For example, if a child grows up with critical parents, she may develop the conviction that she is an incompetent person, and this belief will shape the models of the world that she creates all her life. Therapists can address these faulty, often unconscious assumptions through psychotherapy, which may include insight-oriented psychotherapy, in which the patient and the therapist work to uncover suppressed memories that locked in the negative assumptions. Another helpful technique is CBT, which addresses the assumptions head on, and teaches the patient practical strategies for changing them.”
    • “As we gain experience with the world, we develop better and better models, and this is the basis of wisdom.”
    • “Models are powerful tools, but they have disadvantages. They can lock us in to a particular way of thinking, causing us to miss out on opportunities to improve our world.”
  • Creativity
    • “Dopamine gives us the power to create. It allows us to imagine the unreal and connect the seemingly unrelated. It allows us to build mental models of the world that transcend mere physical description, moving beyond sensory impressions to uncover the deeper meaning of what we experience. Then, like a child knocking over a tower of blocks, dopamine demolishes its own models so that we can start fresh and find new meaning in what was once familiar.”
    • “Creative thinking requires people to let go of the conventional interpretations of the world in order to see things in a brand-new way. In other words, they must break apart their preconceived models of reality.”
    • “It’s dopamine that builds models, and dopamine that breaks them apart.”
    • “What one word does the sequence “HIJKLMNO” represent?”
    • “Wilson says that treatment to reduce the symptoms did not significantly reduce his creativity. Contrary to popular perception, the untreated pain of mental illness is a hindrance, not a help.”

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity . . . Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together . . . I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Geniuses
    • “The better you are at managing the most complex, abstract ideas, the more likely you are to be an artist.”
    • “Music and math go together because elevated levels of dopamine often come as a package deal: if you are highly dopaminergic in one area, you’re likely to be highly dopaminergic in others.”
    • “Scientists are artists and musicians are mathematicians.”
    • “High levels of dopamine suppress H&N functioning, so brilliant people are often poor at human relationships. We need H&N empathy to understand what’s going on in other people’s minds, an essential skill for social interaction.”
    • On Einstein: “Once again, he was unfaithful, cheating on his cousin with his secretary and possibly a half-dozen other girlfriends as well. His dopaminergic mind was both a blessing and a curse—the elevated levels of dopamine that allowed him to discover relativity was most likely the same dopamine that drove him from relationship to relationship, never allowing him to make the switch to H&N-focused, long-term companionate love.”
    • “To them, the difference between loving humanity and loving your neighbor is the difference between loving the idea of a puppy and taking care of it.”
    • “At the age of fifty, Newton became fully psychotic and spent a year in an insane asylum.”
    • “But no matter how rich, famous, or successful they become, they’re almost never happy, certainly never satisfied. Evolutionary forces that promote the survival of the species produce these special people. Nature drives them to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of bringing into the world new ideas and innovations that benefit the rest of us.”
  • Analogies
    • “Analogies represent a very dopaminergic way of thinking about the world.”
    • “An analogy pulls out the abstract, unseen essence of a concept, and matches it with a similar essence of an apparently unrelated concept. The body’s senses perceive two different things, but reason understands how they are the same. Pairing a brand-new idea with an old familiar one makes the new idea easier to understand.”
    • “The ability to draw a connection between two things that had previously appeared to be unrelated is an important part of creativity, and it appears that it can be enhanced by electrical stimulation.”
  • Dreams
    • “Dreams are similar to abstract thought in that they work with material taken from the external world, but they arrange the material in ways that are unconstrained by physical reality.”
    • “Abstract, detached from the real world of the senses, dreams are dopaminergic.”
    • “Dopamine is unleashed during dreaming, freed from the restraining influence of the reality-focused H&N neurotransmitters. Activity in the H&N circuits is suppressed because sensory input from the outside world into the brain is blocked.”
      • Hypothesis: Sensory deprivation tanks are correlated with high dopamine levels.
    • “Cut off from the senses, dreams allow dopamine to run free, unconstrained by the concrete facts of external reality.”
    • “About half the students had a dream related to their problem, and 70 percent of those who dreamed about the problem believed their dreams contained a solution.”
    • “Choose a problem that’s important to you, one that you have a strong desire to solve. The greater the desire, the more likely it is that the problem will show up in a dream. Think about the problem before you go to bed. If possible, put it in the form of a visual image. If it’s a problem with a relationship, imagine the person it involves. If you’re looking for inspiration, imagine a blank piece of paper. If you’re struggling with some sort of project, imagine an object that represents the project. Hold the image in your mind, so it’s the last thing you think of before you fall asleep. Make sure you have a pen and paper next to your bed. As soon as you wake up from a dream, write it down, whether or not you think it’s related to the problem.”

Chapter 5: Politics

Overall, though, the data support a tendency toward a progressive political ideology among people with a more dopaminergic personality and a conservative one for those people with lower levels of dopamine and higher H&Ns.

DANIEL Z. LIEBERMAN & MICHAEL E. LONG – THE MOLECULE OF MORE
  • Liberals & Dopamine
    • “But do dopaminergic people really tend to support liberal policies? It seems that the answer is yes.”
    • “Progressives are idealists who use dopamine to imagine a world far better than the one we live in today.”
    • “What do we know about the politics of Silicon Valley? A survey of startup founders revealed that 83 percent held the progressive view that education can solve all or most of the problems in society. Among the general public, only 44 percent believe this is true.”
    • “According to a study done by the Marriage Foundation, a U.K. think tank, the divorce rate among celebrities is almost twice that of the general population. It’s even worse during the first year of marriage when couples must make the transition from passionate to companionate love. Newly married celebrities are almost six times as likely to divorce compared to ordinary people.”
    • “Academia is a temple of dopamine.”
    • “You’re more likely to find a communist than a conservative in academia. A New York Times opinion piece noted that only 2 percent of English professors were Republicans, while 18 percent of social scientists identified themselves as Marxist.”
    • “Politics is about change and change is driven by dopamine.”
    • “Some people in Washington call themselves liberal and others call themselves conservative, but pretty much everyone involved in politics is dopaminergic. Otherwise they couldn’t get elected. Political campaigns require intense motivation. They require a willingness to sacrifice everything to achieve success. Long hours take a toll on family life in particular. H&N people, who make relationships with loved ones a priority, can’t succeed in politics. In the United Kingdom, the divorce rate among members of Parliament is double that of the general population.”
  • Conservatives & Dopamine
    • “While conservatives on average may lack some of the virtuoso talents of the dopaminergic left, they are more likely to enjoy the advantages of a strong H&N system. These include empathy and altruism—particularly in the form of charitable giving—and the ability to establish long-term, monogamous relationships.”
    • “Conservatives have less sex than liberals, possibly because conservatives are more likely to be in companionate relationships in which testosterone is suppressed by oxytocin and vasopressin. Though the sex may be less frequent, it’s more likely to end in orgasm for both partners.”
    • “Finally, as would be expected when comparing liberals (with their elevated dopamine) with conservatives (with their elevated H&N neurotransmitters), conservatives are happier than liberals.”
    • “In a similar vein, people who were married were happier than those who were single, and people who went to church were happier than those who did not.”
      • All mediated by low dopamine and high HN
    • “On average, liberals are more likely to be forward thinking, cerebral, inconstant, creative, intelligent, and dissatisfied. Conservatives, by contrast, are more likely to be comfortable with emotions, reliable, stable, conventional, less intellectual, and happy.”
    • “H&N conservatives may be hostile to the idea of immigration, but they have an innate ability to connect on an empathic basis to actual immigrants.”
    • “Five hundred liberals marching down the street are probably staging a protest. With conservatives, it’s more likely a parade.”
  • Altruism
    • “Dopaminergic people want the poor to receive more help, while H&N people want to provide personal help on a one-to-one basis.”
    • “Transforming abstract groups into concrete individuals is a good way to activate H&N empathy circuits.”
    • “Altruism has been associated with greater well-being, health, and longevity. There is even evidence that helping others slows down aging at the cellular level.”
    • “Instead, it may be that, like Albert Einstein, liberals are more comfortable focusing on humanity rather than humans.”
      • Laws and policies rather than H&N donations now.
      • “In 2012, federal, state, and local governments spent about $1 trillion on antipoverty programs. That’s approximately $20,000 for every poor person in America. Charitable giving, on the other hand, was only $360 billion. The dopaminergic approach provided almost three times as much money.”
    • “The results showed that Americans who strongly oppose redistribution by government to address this problem gave 10 times more to charity than those who strongly support government action: $1,627 annually versus $140. Similarly, compared to people who want more welfare spending, those who believe that the government spends too much money on welfare are more likely to give directions to someone on the street, return extra change to a cashier, and give food or money to a homeless person.”
      • More donations for those who oppose redistributing wealth. Maybe they’re just richer? Should look at the proportion of income donated.
  • Intelligence
    • “A career in academia is generally a sign of superior intelligence, but does superior intelligence extend to liberals in general, to people more likely to have highly active dopamine systems? It probably does. Testing the ability to manipulate abstract ideas, courtesy of the dopamine control circuit, is a fundamental part of how psychologists measure intelligence.”
    • “Adults who described themselves as very liberal had higher intelligence scores compared to those who described themselves as simply liberal. The liberals had higher scores than those who described themselves as middle of the road, and the progression held steady all the way down to those who described themselves as very conservative. With a score of 100 representing the average, very liberal adults had an IQ of 106 and very conservative ones had an IQ of 95.”
    • “Atheists had an IQ of 103, whereas those who described themselves as very religious averaged 97.”
    • “Most experts agree that an IQ test is not a measure of general intelligence. It more specifically measures the ability to make generalizations from incomplete data and to figure out new information using abstract rules.”
    • “Another way of saying it is that an IQ test measures a person’s ability to build imaginary models based on past experiences, and then use those models to predict what will happen in the future. Control dopamine plays a large role.”
    • “However, there are other ways to define intelligence, such as the ability to make good day-to-day decisions. For this type of mental activity emotions (H&N) are essential. Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California and the author of Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, notes that most decisions cannot be approached in a purely rational way.”
    • “The role of emotions in decision making has not been studied as extensively as the role of rational thought; however, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to predict that individuals who have a strong H&N system would have an advantage in this area.”
  • Loss Aversion
    • “Every time a participant lost a bet, their amygdala fired up, intensifying feelings of distress. It was H&N emotion that was driving loss aversion. The H&N system doesn’t care about the future. It doesn’t care about things we might get. It cares about what we have right now. And when those things are threatened, out comes the experience of fear and distress.”
    • “In this case, scientists studied two patients who had Urbach–Wiethe disease, a rare condition that destroys the amygdala on both sides of the brain. When these individuals were presented with wagers, they attached equal weight to gain and loss. Without the amygdala, loss aversion vanished.”
    • “Evidence of loss aversion was present in both groups, but it was more pronounced among conservatives.”
    • Manipulating Political Ideologies
    • “Professor Glenn D. Wilson, a psychologist who studies the influence of evolution on human behavior, joked that during election season, bathroom signs that say “Employees must wash hands before returning to work” are billboards for the Republican Party.”
      • Threat leads to more conservative.
    • “Drugs work, too. Scientists can make people behave more like conservatives by giving them medication that boosts the H&N neurotransmitter serotonin.”
    • “Increasing serotonin shifts moral judgment away from an abstract goal (enforcing fairness) toward an avoidance of carrying out actions that might harm someone (depriving the proposer of her share of the money).”
    • “The single dose of citalopram made people more willing to forgive unfair behavior and less willing to view harming another person as permissible, an attitude consistent with an H&N predominance. The researchers described this behavior as prosocial at the individual level. Prosocial is a term that means willingness to help other people. Rejecting unfair offers is called prosocial at the group level. Punishing people who make unfair offers promotes fairness that benefits the larger community, which is more consistent with a dopaminergic approach.”

Chapter 6: Progress

We identify with our dopamine. In our minds, we are dopamine.

DANIEL Z. LIEBERMAN & MICHAEL E. LONG – THE MOLECULE OF MORE
  • Exploration & Immigration
    • “Modern humans evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago and began spreading to other parts of the world approximately 100,000 years later.”
    • “This high level of genetic similarity suggests that we are all descendants of a relatively small number of ancestors. In fact, early in our evolutionary history, unknown events killed off a large portion of humans, and the population dwindled to less than 20,000, representing a serious risk of extinction. That near-extinction event illustrates why migration is so important.”
    • “Research on mice has shown that drugs that boost dopamine also increase exploratory behavior.”
    • “Among populations that remained near their origins, fewer people had a long DRD4 allele compared to those who migrated farther away.”
    • “There’s also evidence that people who carry the 7R allele are faster learners, especially when getting the answer right triggers a reward. In general, 7R carriers are more sensitive to rewards; they have stronger reactions to both wins and losses.”
    • “Another advantage is that the 7R allele is associated with something called low reactivity to novel stressors.”
    • “Under familiar conditions, in which social cooperation counts the most, highly dopaminergic genes become less common because their survival and mate-seeking advantages diminish relative to the benefits of more balanced dopamine levels.”
    • “The farther a population migrated, the greater the frequency of the 7R allele. It didn’t start them moving, but it did help them survive as they went along.”
    • “Immigrant populations have about the same percentage of the 7R allele as the people who remained in their home country.”
    • “Some of the most important companies of the new economy were founded by immigrants, including Google, Intel, PayPal, eBay, and Snapchat. As of 2005, 52 percent of Silicon Valley start-ups had been founded by immigrant entrepreneurs, a remarkable figure in light of the fact that immigrants make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population. The country that provides America with the greatest number of technology entrepreneurs is India.”
    • “immigrants start a quarter of all new businesses in the United States—about twice as many per capita as other Americans. And looking at entrepreneurship broadly, we can come full circle and find a direct link to dopamine.”
  • Bipolar Disorder
    • “People with bipolar disorder experience episodes of depression when their mood is abnormally low and episodes of mania when it’s too high. The latter is associated with high levels of dopamine, which shouldn’t be surprising given the symptoms of the manic state: high energy, euphoric mood, racing thoughts that quickly jump from one topic to another, an abundance of activity in pursuit of many goals at once, and excessive involvement in high-risk, pleasure-seeking activities such as unrestrained spending and promiscuous sexual behavior.”
    • “Smarter brains had a greater risk of developing a dopaminergic mental illness compared to ordinary ones.”
    • “Cocaine intoxication is so similar to mania that doctors have trouble telling them apart.”
    • “Children of bipolar parents are at least twice as likely to develop bipolar disorder compared to the general population. Some studies have found the risk to be ten times as high. But sometimes the children get lucky. They get the advantages bipolar people enjoy without getting the illness itself.”
    • “As noted, bipolar disorder isn’t all or nothing. Mood-disorder specialists talk about a bipolar spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is bipolar I. People with this form of the illness experience severe mania and severe depression. Next comes bipolar II. People with bipolar II experience severe depression, but more mild episodes of elevated mood called hypomania (hypo means below, like a hypodermic injection that delivers a drug underneath the skin). Farther down the spectrum is cyclothymia, which is characterized by cycles of hypomania and mild depressive episodes. Then there is something called hyperthymic temperament, derived from the Greek word thymia, which means state of mind. Hyperthymic temperament is not considered an illness. It doesn’t occur in episodes like bipolar disorder. People with hyperthymic temperament just have a “hyper” personality, and they have it all the time. According to Hagop Akiskal, who did much of the pioneering work in this area, people with hyperthymic temperaments are upbeat, exuberant, jocular, overoptimistic, overconfident, boastful, and full of energy and plans. They are versatile with broad interests, overinvolved and meddlesome, uninhibited and risk-taking, and they generally don’t sleep very much. They become overly enthusiastic about new directions in their lives, such as diets, romantic partners, business opportunities, even religions, and then quickly lose interest. They often accomplish a great deal, but they can be difficult to live with. The last stage of the bipolar spectrum belongs to people who inherit a very limited amount of genetic risk. These people don’t experience any abnormal symptoms, but they do enjoy such things as enhanced motivation, creativity, a tendency toward bold action and risk-taking, and other characteristics that reflect higher than average levels of dopamine activity.”
  • The Dopamine Life
    • “The United States and other immigrant societies may have the most dopaminergic genes, but a dopaminergic approach to life has become an integral part of modern culture, whether one’s genes support it or not. The world is now characterized by a never-ending flow of information, new products, advertising, and the perceived need for more. Dopamine is now associated with the most essential part of our being. Dopamine has taken over our souls.”
    • “We identify with our dopamine. In our minds, we are dopamine.”
      • “Ask a philosopher what is the essence of humanity, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he said it was free will. The essence of humanity is our ability to move beyond instinct, to go beyond automatic reactions to our environment. It’s the ability to weigh options, to consider higher concepts such as values and principles, and then to make a deliberate choice about how to maximize what we believe is good—whether it’s love, money, or the ennobling of the soul. That’s dopamine.”
      • “We do so much that bypasses the part of the brain that weighs options and makes choices, that an argument could be made that those non-conscious actions—non-dopaminergic activities—represent who we really are.”
      • “The way we move is part of what defines us.”
    • “A Harvard study that’s been going on for seventy-four years has found that social isolation (even in the absence of feelings of loneliness) is associated with a 50 to 90 percent higher risk of early death. That’s about the same as smoking, and higher than obesity or lack of exercise.”
    • “Instead of enjoying the beauty of a flower, we imagine only how it would look in a vase on our kitchen table. Instead of smelling the morning air and looking at the sky, we consult the weather app on our smartphone, neck bent, oblivious to the world around us.”
    • “Even a future one second away is unreal. It is only the stark facts of the present that are real, facts that must be accepted exactly as they are, facts that cannot be modified by a hair’s breadth to suit our needs. This is the world of reality. The future, where dopaminergic creatures live their lives, is a world of phantoms.”
    • “We’ve simply become too good at gratifying our dopaminergic desires: not all forms of more and new and novel are good for an individual, and the same is true for a species. Dopamine doesn’t stop. It drives us ever onward into the abyss.”
    • “In other words, behavior driven by dopamine will need to be drastically suppressed and the era of better, faster, cheaper, and more will have to end.”
    • “Dopamine will drive the science forward whether it’s good for us or not.”
  • Parenting & Underpopulation
    • “Future-focused dopamine no longer drives couples to have children because people who live in developed countries don’t depend on their children to support them in their old age. Government-funded retirement plans take care of that. That frees up dopamine to move on to other things like TVs, cars, and remodeled kitchens.”
    • “In South Korea couples earn cash and prizes for having more than one child, and in Russia they get a chance to win a refrigerator.”
  • Virtual Reality
    • “Why bother having sex with a needy, repetitive, imperfect partner when an ever-changing fantasy can be had instead? Pornography is about to become a lot more addictive by entering the realm of touch. Devices have recently come to market that deliver genital stimulation synchronized with pornographic VR—essentially sex toys manipulated by a computer.”
    • “With VR, the human race may go willingly into the dark night. Our dopamine circuits will tell us it’s the best thing ever. There’s only one thing that will save us: the ability to achieve a better balance, to overcome our obsession with more, appreciate the unlimited complexity of reality, and learn to enjoy the things we have.”

Chapter 7: Harmony

The happiest people were construction workers. Construction workers take abstract plans and make them real. They use their minds and their hands. They also enjoy a high degree of camaraderie.

DANIEL Z. LIEBERMAN & MICHAEL E. LONG – THE MOLECULE OF MORE
  • Medication
    • “He was given the standard treatment for depression, an antidepressant that changes the way the brain uses the H&N neurotransmitter serotonin, and he had an excellent response. Over the course of about a month his mood gradually improved until he was once again bright and cheerful. He became more resilient and was able to enjoy the good things in his life. It was a relief to his wife, as well. He thought it would be interesting to try a higher dose of the medication, just to see what would happen, and his doctor agreed. “It felt great,” he said at his next visit. “I was so happy, there was nothing I needed to do. There was no reason to get out of bed in the morning.” He and his doctor decided to reduce the dose to its previous level, and his emotional balance returned.”
  • Mastery
    • “Mastery is the ability to extract the maximum reward from a particular set of circumstances.”
    • Transcending the game completely. Having “enough” money, a satisfying relationship, a martial art so you don’t need to fight, a coherent worldview.
    • “From dopamine’s point of view mastery is a good thing—something to be desired and pursued.”
    • “Mastery is the point at which dopamine bows to H&N. Having done all it can do, dopamine pauses, and allows H&N to have its way with our happiness circuits. Even if it’s only for a short time, dopamine doesn’t fight the feeling of contentment. It approves. The best basking is basking in a job well done.”
    • “If we aim to be great, we will probably have to accept the fact that misery will be a part of it. It’s the goad of dissatisfaction that keeps us at our work while others are enjoying the company of family and friends.”
  • The Rewards of Reality& the Present Moment
    • “Reality is the richest source of the unexpected. Fantasies that we conjure in our minds are predictable. We go over the same material again and again. Once in a while we’ll be struck by an original idea, but it’s rare, and it usually happens when we’re paying attention to something else—not when we’re trying to strong-arm our creativity into action.”
    • “Paying attention to reality, to what you are actually doing in the moment, maximizes the flow of information into your brain. It maximizes dopamine’s ability to make new plans, because to build models that will accurately predict the future, dopamine needs data, and data flows from the senses. That’s dopamine and H&N working together.”
    • “Living our lives in the abstract, unreal, dopaminergic world of future possibilities comes at a cost, and that cost is happiness.”
    • “The researchers concluded that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.””
    • “It’s sensory reality and abstract thought working together that unlocks the brain’s full potential. Operating at its peak performance, it becomes capable of producing not only happiness and satisfaction, not only wealth and knowledge, but a rich mixture of sensory experience and wise understanding, a mixture that can set us down the path toward a more balanced way of being human.”
  • Creativity & Hobbies
    • “By spending time in the present, we take in sensory information about the reality we live in, allowing the dopamine system to use that information to develop reward-maximizing plans. The impressions that we absorb have the potential to inspire a flurry of new ideas, enhancing our ability to find new solutions to the problems we face. And that’s a wonderful thing. Creating something new, something that has never been conceived of before is, by definition, surprising. Because it is always new, creation is the most durable of the dopaminergic pleasures.”
    • “Creativity is an excellent way to mix together dopamine and H&N.”
    • “But there are more ordinary forms of creativity that anyone can practice, acts of creation that promote balance, rather than dopaminergic dominance. Woodworking, knitting, painting, decorating, and sewing are old-fashioned activities that don’t get much attention in our modern world—which is exactly the point.”
    • “Coloring books for adults feature beautiful, abstract geometric patterns—dopaminergic abstractions combined with sensory experience.”
    • “fixing things is a unique pleasure. Each project is a problem that needs to be solved—a dopaminergic activity—and then the solution is made real.”
    • “Fixing things also boosts self-efficacy and increases one’s sense of control: H&N delivering dopaminergic gratification.”
    • “Cooking, gardening, and playing sports are among many activities that combine intellectual stimulation with physical activity in a way that will satisfy us and make us whole. These activities can be pursued for a lifetime without becoming stale.”
  • Working with your Hands & Relationships
    • “The happiest people were construction workers. Construction workers take abstract plans and make them real. They use their minds and their hands. They also enjoy a high degree of camaraderie.”
    • “Affiliative relationships in the context of the work environment played a key role: work and friendship, dopamine and H&N.”

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E. B. White

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