Why You Should Get Lost More Often⁠↗

[A project] is about making a living, and it’s about finding fulfillment, but it’s also about having fun.

there’s some really interesting stuff about this DRD4. It’s linked to ancient migration patterns, but also behaviors like ADHD, and risk seeking, and so why is it still around? I think one way to think of it is that in any group it’s useful to have people who are pushing at the boundaries, trying new things, and it’s useful to have people who are conserving knowledge.

One thing I finally accepted is that dopamine has a lot of roles and scientists don’t agree on exactly what it’s doing. The picture of dopamine that I think is useful in this context is that dopamine is a marker of prediction error. You don’t get a hit of dopamine when something is good; you get a hit of dopamine when something is better than expected. And you can think about this in the context of addiction: the first time you take a drug, you’re like, “Wow. This is way better than I expected. I need more.” The tenth time you take it, you’re like, “Oh, this is exactly what I expected, therefore I need a bigger dose.” You can’t do the same thing over and over and continue to get a dopamine hit. And that’s why social media algorithms are very good at continually giving us something unexpected. They’re trying to make sure that you’re surprised. But this aspect of dopamine also translates into a fundamental drive for novelty. What’s the best way of finding something that’s better than you expected? It’s to go in the direction where you don’t have any expectations, where you don’t know what to expect.

This was comparing each generation when they were eight years old. It goes from six miles for the great-grandfather, to one mile to a local forest for the grandfather, then half a mile for the mother, and then today the kid is allowed to walk 300 yards to the end of his block. That’s a big constriction. No wonder he wants to play on his iPad. Going outside sucks. He can go 300 yards and none of his friends are there because they’re all inside.

So, yeah, I think it’s a good idea to be lost occasionally, whether it’s in your neighborhood or — as I have been — lost at the climbing gym trying to figure out how on earth am I supposed to get up this wall? I don’t know how; I’m terrible at climbing, but I think it’s good for me to be terrible and lost at things sometimes.