It's okay to quit
This post is migrated from the old Wordpress blog. Some things may be broken.
“Everyone Wants to Quit, but They Can’t”
First, just read this post in which okdoomer.io blogger Jessica Wildfire shows how our culture has bigged up dopamine while having taught us to ignore or (worse) see nociceptin as a problem. And then understand how profoundly that’s messed us up as human beings.
Most people don’t know about nociceptin, but it’s the anthesis of dopamine. It’s produced in the brain to signal the opposite of a reward. All animals including humans have this and its function is to suggest we avoid things that aren’t paying off. “Wild animals can’t afford to expend energy on ventures that aren’t worth the effort,” Jessica writes. Arguably, humans can’t really afford it either, but we’ve collectively taught ourselves the opposite of that.
On an instinctual level, every other animal just understands that if they expose themselves to predators and the elements every time they emerge from their homes they’re playing with fire. Meanwhile: “Humans have a flaw. Many of us think it’s good to keep going at all costs. We don’t know when to walk away. Annie Duke writes about it in her book Quit. Our culture does a weird thing by rewarding people for never giving up, even when it ends in disaster and death. This problem plagues everyone, from corporations to governments. There’s even a name for it: ‘Sunk cost fallacy.'”
OKdoomer’s been one of my favourite blogs for a little while, and this post is a good reason why. It’s a kind of meditation on “The science behind giving up” a 2019 study at the University of Washington Health Sciences department aimed at finding “insight into the complex world of motivation and reward by discovering the science behind giving up.” The research itself seems to be aimed at the opposite of the take-away we could gain, though. Yes, you could possibly help people get over some addictions, but also, If we can better understand the chemical processes at play when people drop the ball on something, we can create better solutions to get them to push through it. Imagine what that could do for military or business efficiency. Sounds awful.
What if instead we learned to listen to these brain signals better, and realise when our efforts aren’t paying off? OkDoomer: “We’ve created an economic system that doesn’t allow anyone to stay in their nests and stop seeking rewards. It doesn’t matter how much nociceptin we’ve got in our brains. Capitalism compels us to continue pretending to seek rewards, even if there’s no reward to be had.”
It’s okay to quiet quit some things.
