The Molecule of More by Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Love
Chapter 2: Drugs
Chapter 3: Domination
Chapter 4: Creativity and Madness
Chapter 5: Politics
Chapter 6: Progress
Chapter 7: Harmony

Synopsis

This book delineates dopamine, a key chemical in human brains which is what the authors entail to be the key to further unlocking one’s potential. The author starts off by explaining how there are up and down choices where down choices are things easily reachable with little to no planning, effort or thought. While the up choices are those that require individuals to plan, think, calculate and more.
In this book, the down chemicals will be commonly referred to as the Here & Now chemicals which allow one to live in the moment.
While the up chemical is dopamine which causes people to desire the “don’t haves” and seek out novelty. In this book, the authors contoured what dopamine is and how it plays out in different areas of our lives.

Chapter 1: Love

The book starts by piquing one’s interest by asking a rhetorical question on why honeymoons do not last forever.
Dopamine is commonly seen as a pleasure chemical. Instead, dopamine is the chemical of possibility and anticipation.

The authors carry on explaining how love fades due to a lower amount of dopamine being produced. This is due to our brains craving the unexpected and always looking to the future. However, when love becomes familiar, the excitement that comes from the unexpected precipitates.

Dopamine is produced from the pleasure of anticipation. It stems from the possibility of something unfamiliar and better.

Another aspect that increases dopamine significantly is the reward prediction error where things turned out better than one expected.
Hence, it is vital to understand that when things become familiar and routine, dopamine is not triggered as much or even at all.

Due to the nature of dopamine trying to maximize resources that are available to us in the future, it causes us to be in pursuing a better future.

It is important to differentiate between romantic love and companionship love. It shifts love from anticipation to experience. Moving from the fantasy of anything being possible to be engaged with reality.

Hence, it aids one in explaining why when romantic love which is driven by the love of anticipation ends, it leads to the relationship potentially ending due to the difficulty in transitioning from anticipation to experience.

Keys to a long-lasting love
By understanding how dopamine is an anticipation molecule rather than a pleasure molecule, it requires one to transition from future-oriented dopamine to present-oriented H&N chemicals (serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins and endocannabinoids).

Either dopamine or H&N Chemicals
When dopamine is released, it suppresses H&N chemicals, causing us to be future-oriented. When dopamine is suppressed by H&N chemicals, it causes us to experience reality.

How dopamine affects sex
It is pivotal to understand how dopaminergic people have difficulty allowing H&N chemicals to take over during sex. This is because they are required to turn off their throughs and just enjoy the present. The case of really thinking less and feeling more. The climax of sex and orgasm tend to feel the best as it is strong enough to move even the most dopaminergic person into the H&N world.

Understanding why parents say not to have pre-marital sex
When one experiences passionate love, it tends to increase the desire to have sex. That increase in desire is due to testosterone. That increase in desire will further increase passionate love. Hence, delaying sexual satisfaction enhances passionate love. Waiting till after marriage, it increases testosterone and dopamine. It is best explained as passion deferred is passion sustained.

Happiness: Dopamine vs H&N chemicals
Dopamine creates short-term happiness while H&N chemicals have the power to deliver long-term happiness. Companionate love anchored in H&N chemicals is the only stable way to achieve long-term satisfying relationships. While dopamine’s purpose which is to maximize future rewards creates a downward spiral to love. It increases our desires but does not provide a long-term solution. Dopamine is the start while H&N provides the end.

Chapter 2: Drugs

Dopamine + H&N chemicals
Understanding how dopamine is the molecule of anticipation, there are some that spent their lives pursuing the feeling of anticipation. The feeling that life will get better. Dopamine causes one to think that the future is bright and rosy. However, this anticipation causes people to adopt the motto “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive”. They tend to be always anticipating rather than being rooted in reality. Hence, it is important to use dopamine as a driver fueled by passion while the H&N chemicals allow us to appreciate what we have achieved and what we already have. Only by balancing both will we be able to drive for the future while being rooted in reality.

Wanting vs Liking
When one anticipates the desired purchase, dopamine is released – creating excitement. Once the product is purchased, the desired object moves from the look-up extrapersonal space (dopamine/anticipation) to the look-down space (H&N chemicals/reality). This tends to lead to buyer’s remorse as there is a failure of the H&N experience to compensate for the dopaminergic arousal. However, if the purchase is a wise one, it is possible that the strong H&N gratification will make up for the loss of the dopaminergic thrill. Another way to get around buyer’s remorse is to purchase something that triggers more dopaminergic expectations. This elucidates why many people do shopping and more.

1. Chase the dopamine high by buying more
2. Avoid dopamine crash by buying less
3. Strengthen ability to transition from dopamine desire to H&N liking

Hacking the desire circuit
Drugs hack the desire circuit as they over stimulate natural inducing dopamine rewards such as food, sex and more. Hence, it explains why food and sex addictions do come hand in hand with drug addictions.

Dopamine and novelty
Dopamine aims to predict the future and when one gains unexpected rewards, it sends a signal to the brain to pay attention and learn something new. This is why when there is new music, event and all, it causes us to place our attention there.

Drinking: Drunk vs high
The book delineates how the speed with which alcohol gets into the brain determines how high a drinker feels. It is the total amount of alcohol consumed, whether slow or slow that determines the level of intoxication leading to sedation. When it comes to mixing drinks, it delivers dopamine faster as it contains more alcohol and sugar.

Dopamine: Persistent desire with fleeting happiness
It is due to dopamine that explains why life’s intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desire.

Nicotine
Drugs tend to boost dopamine which also boosts impulsive behaviour. When the dopamine system is stimulated, the system itself demands more. Nicotine interestingly does not trigger compulsive use and most people do not like it when they try smoking for the first time. People tend to like other forms of drugs the first time they try them as they get high from them. Nicotine on the other hand makes them feel more relaxed and alert. In actual fact, nicotine is just relieving craving for itself. The only inflexion point of smoking cigarettes is to get addicted so that the experience of relieving the unpleasant feeling of craving brings about the feeling of pleasure. A good way to put it is a person who carries a rock all day will feel good when the load is placed down.

Dopamine and pornography
High readily available pornographic materials make it easier to get addicted to them. With easy access to different forms of addictions such as alcohol, cigarettes and pornography, it makes it harder to stay away from them.
Pornography tends to cause people to pursue more time and wilder content to satisfy themselves. This tends to cause their sexual relations with their partners to become less frequent and less satisfying.

Dopamine and video games
Video games are about progress where the future becomes better than the present. This can be seen through levels where strength, abilities and all are increased. This causes dopamine to be released as it is the anticipation of a better future and also the unexpected gains that come. The video games keep having players pursue more. Furthermore, games are filled with rewards. The players’ expectations are also always kept off balance as they never know when the next reward will be. The information collected by the creators of the games, it allows them to realise what amount of what is required to release dopamine. Other than the progress, exceeding expectations, and rewards, it also has to do with socialisation. Games nowadays are multiplayer causing many people to gain social pleasure from these activities. Lastly, games are aesthetically pleasing and filled with storylines. All these different factors lead to a multi-layered dopamine release.

Chapter 3: Domination

Planning and Calculation
The author highlights how dopamine is the reason why we desire more. However, dopamine is also the same thing that helps one with planning, calculation and imagination. The desire dopamine causes one to crave for things that they do not have right now. While the dopamine control circuit is the building block of imagination and creativity such as ideas, plans, theories, abstract concepts and more.
For us to tap on the dopamine control circuit instead of desiring dopamine, one has to stop giving in to instant gratification and rather delayed gratification. This is because the dopamine control circuit encourages us to maximize our resources through rewards when we do so. When we do things to make the future better, it hits us with dopamine.

Tenacity
It is vital to understand that desire and imagination are insufficient in bringing one’s dreams and goals to fruition. To do so, one must struggle with the failures and realities of the real world. This is where tenacity comes into play as tenacity and knowledge will carry one till one achieves the dopamine hit. By going through the same routine/ritual of failure, pain and realities of the world through persistence, grit, tenacity and acquiring knowledge, will make the brain accustomed to the feeling of discomfort being the action required to achieve the desired dopamine hit.

In the book, they used lab rats to elucidate how when there is no dopamine, there will be lesser effort exerted. Hence, one’s level of dopamine correlates to the quality of their effort. An example given was how rats that were hungry and the rats that were less hungry had different results when they have to exert effort to get their treats. The rats that were not hungry will exert less effort in the end. Hence, it is important for one to be hungry for whatever they are aiming towards as it correlates to their dopamine levels.

Dopamine and the power of confidence
The author shared how humans need to believe we can succeed before we are able to actually succeed. Those who encountered success early on have higher levels of tenacity.
Through experiments, the author found that when people expand themselves, taking up a larger amount of space, they tend to be perceived as dominant. On the other hand, when they constrict themselves, taking up as little space as possible, they are perceived as submissive.
They realized that when someone adopts a dominant position, the other tends to adopt a complementary position. They realized that when one takes on a complementary position, the other party tends to like them more rather than those who mirrored the same position.
An interesting fact is how individuals unconsciously know when someone has a high expectation of success. What individuals tend to do is to get out of their way but submit their will. Individuals who tend to have high expectations of success tend to have high self-efficacy and control dopamine. Why this occurs due to individuals realizing that it is a bad idea to get into a fight they cannot win.

Affiliative and Agentic Relationships
An agentic relationship is formed for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Generally orchestrated by dopamine. An example of an agentic relationship is the relationship formed at networking events.
Affiliative relationships are those for the purpose of enjoying social interactions. The pleasure of being with another person – experiencing the here and now.
An interesting finding is that different personality types prefer different relationships. Agentic people tend to be cool and distant while affiliative people are affectionate and warm.
An interesting fact is how agentic relationships are established for the purpose of dominating one’s environment by extracting as many available resources from it. Even though it is commonly believed that domination is an active aggressive activity, it actually does not have to be. Dopamine does not care how something is obtained but rather if it is able to get it. Hence, an agentic relationship can be purely passive. An example is if a manager keeps silent in an employee’s meeting and still gets the outcome he wants, he still achieves to get the dopamine hit.

An interesting example of how domination is achieved through self-submission is the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson realized that no matter how ignorant, degraded, or foolish a man is, there is something he knows, something he has mastered. That mastery is what Emerson valued. Such relationships Emerson have is about gaining knowledge. It is not the H&N pleasure of having company but rather about desire. Emerson found domination through submission – self-submissions in the form of deference, humility and obedience in order to gain more.

Dopamine and winning
When it comes to winning competitions, eating and sex, they are all important for evolutionary success. In fact, it is winning competitions that give one access to food and reproductive partners. Thus, it is not surprising that winning releases dopamine. It is also important to highlight how the release of H&N chemicals is a surge of satisfaction while the release of dopamine is a pleasure that leaves one wanting more.

It is important to delineate how winning is never enough for dopamine. It is the journey that one goes through that dopamine is looking for rather than the end line. However, there is also a dopamine crash that comes after winning. If one was to lose, losing would be ten times worse than the pleasant feeling.

Willpower being a limited resource
In the book, the author mentioned how willpower is a limited resource through an example of dieting. If one was to be on a diet, the more times one resists temptation, the more likely they are to fail the next time they have to do so.

Chapter 4: Creativity and Madness

What is salient is where our mind focuses
Our minds attach salient things as important causing us to place more attention and emphasis on them. There is a wide variation in how much salience different people attach to other things. Our brain filters what is salient and what is not. This allows our minds to ignore them as it is impossible for us to notice every detail in the world.

Our attention goes to what we focus on
Our mind inhibits our ability to notice things that are not salient so that one does not waste our attention on things that are unimportant.
At times, the environment is filled with new things that the mind is unable to pick and choose what is most important. This tends to lead one to feel excited or frightened.
As the new environment becomes familiar, one adjusts and eventually masters it. Our mind unconsciously categorises the important and unimportant things allowing us to focus on what is truly essential.

Building mental models
Mental models are imaginary representations of the world that one builds in order to better understand the world around them. In some ways, model building is like latent inhibition. Models contain only the elements of the environment that the mind deems to be important and essential. Other details are removed. This makes the world easier to comprehend and can be used for maximum benefit in the future. Building mental models is something done autonomously and self-updates as one learns new things.

Mental Time Travel
Mental time travel is a powerful tool of the dopamine system. It enables one to imagine an unreal future. The future we predict and imagined is dependent on the mental models that one has. Without us knowing, we are constantly using mental time travel as it enables us to make every conscious decision in our lives. Mental time travel is the key tool to us making our every “next step” in life. The quality of one’s mental time travel depends on the quality of the mental models we have.

Fixing/improving one’s mental models
It is pivotal to have our mental models fit the realities of the world. If our models are bad, we will tend to make bad predictions about the future and eventually make bad decisions. Poor models of reality may be caused by:
1. Lack of information
2. Difficulty abstracting thinking
3. Stubborn persistence of wrong assumptions
To build better models, one has to:
1. Embrace models that work well and discard those that do not
2. Gaining knowledge/wisdom passed from previous generations
3. Gaining inherited knowledge from great scientists and philosophers

Breaking mental models
Dopamine builds our models and dopamine also is the one responsible for breaking them apart. To do so requires one to think about things that do not currently exist.

Source of creativity
Creativity stems from stopping inhibiting aspects of reality that one had previously written off as unimportant. It requires one to attach salience to things one thought that was non-essential.

Shocking non-salience things
Analogies are the litmus test for creativity. Analogies elucidate a very dopaminergic way of thinking about the world. Analogies pull out the abstract, unseen parts of an unrelated concept – merging the two concepts together. It is the marriage of a brand-new idea with an old familiar one – making a new idea easier to understand. The book mentioned how electrical stimulation appears to be able to enhance creativity. This result can also be found in patients who took dopaminergic drugs.

Dreams: Mingling creativity and madness
Dreams took materials from the world to form ideas that are unconstrained by the material world. Dreams are essentially dopaminergic. This is due to dopamine being unleashed when one dreams. They are free from the influence of reality-focused H&N chemicals. This is due to the H&N chemicals being blocked from the sensory input from reality.
The free reign of dopamine allows it to create unrestrained connections – creating abstract ideas that would have not been thought possible.

Harvesting creativity from a world
In the book, the author enumerated research done on harvesting creativity. The Harvard students wrote down their dreams every night for a week or until they believed they had solved their problem. The results found that half the students had a dream related to their problem and 70% of those who dreamed about the problem believed their dreams contained a solution.

Solving problems in one’s sleep
The greater the desire, the more likely the problem will show up in one’s dream. Thus, one should think about the problem before going to bed. If possible, it is preferable to have it in the form of a visual image. If it is a relationship problem, imagine the person involved in it. If one is looking for inspiration, imagine a blank piece of paper. If it is a struggle with a certain topic/project, imagine an object that represents the project. The aim is to hold the image in one’s mind so that it is the last thing taught before falling asleep.

Why Nobel prize winners like to paint
It is interesting to understand how scientists and researchers require the same ability to look beyond the world of the sense, into a deeper more profound world of abstract ideas – just like artists, poets and more. During the computer programming crisis, companies actually got off-work musicians as they were able to easily learn to program.

Why geniuses are jerks
The author mentioned how music and math go together. This is due to elevated levels of dopamine coming together as a package. If one is highly dopaminergic in one area, they are likely to be highly dopaminergic in another.
High levels of dopamine tend to suppress H&N functioning. Thus, brilliant people who tend to have high dopamine have poor human relationships.
The benefits of having high H&N chemicals come from an increase in empathy to understand what is going on in others’ minds.
Due to high dopamine and low H&N chemicals in intelligent individuals especially, they find it hard to have personal relationships with others. They tend to be far more interested in understanding the world rather than people.
The pleasure-seeker who has difficulty maintaining long-term relationships, the detached planner who would rather work than enjoy time with family and friends, and, the creative genius who struggles with human relationships all have one thing in common. They are all overly focused on maximizing future resources at the expense of appreciating the here and now.
No matter how much pleasure, achievements, breakthroughs and more that he/she gets, it is never enough.

Dopaminergic people
They tend to prefer abstract thinking rather than sensory experience overall. Simply put, the difference between loving humanity and loving one’s neighbour is the same difference between being fascinated with a plant and having to take care of a plant.

The bright and dark side of dopamine
Bright: Dopamine gives individuals the ability to create through imagining the unreal and connecting seemingly unrelated ideas. It enables individuals to build mental models of the world that transcend mere physical description, moving beyond sensory impressions to things that cannot be seen. The same dopamine allows one to break down old mental models to build new mental models.
For people with high dopamine, the joy for creation, discovery and enlightenment is the intense joy they can sense.
Dark: It hampers one’s ability to form human relationships and navigate reality. Also, potentially having a mental illness.
The issue to be solved: The challenge highly dopaminergic people have is to become present and enjoy it. For this to happen, they must be able to activate and release their H&N chemicals. The hurdle is that H&N chemicals are disliked and avoided by highly dopaminergic people.

Even though the dark side of highly dopaminergic people is bad. They are highly needed for society’s evolutionary process. It is because of these “special” individuals, they enable and promote the survival of humankind. It is essentially, sacrificing their own happiness for the sake of bringing new ideas and innovations into the world.

Chapter 5: Politics

Personality constellation
The author mentioned on personality constellation that is denoted as P. Individuals with low P scores tend to be more altruistic, well-socialized, empathetic and conventional.
While individuals with high P scores tend to be manipulative, tough-minded and practical. They tend to have characteristics such as risk-taking, sensation-seeking, impulsivity, and authoritarianism.
It was found that those who have high P scores tend to be liberals who tend to be manipulative, tough-minded and practical. While those with low p-scores tend to be conservatives who tend to be altruistic, well-socialized, empathic and conventional.

Conservatives vs Liberals

Left vs Right

Problem with Hollywood

Hollywood is a known place filled with creativity. Hence, it is not a far-fetched connection that celebrities tend to be liberal. This is due to their endless pursuit of more money, more drugs, more fame and more. It clearly elucidates how they have high dopamine levels.
This can be observed from how newly married celebrities are almost six times as likely to divorce compared to ordinary people.
There is also a higher likelihood for them to have mental illness as they face the challenge of feeling in control of their environment and have difficulty navigating through complex relationships.

Liberals on average are smarter
The book stated how on average, liberal adults had an IQ of around 106 and conservative adults had an IQ of 95.
Another test done was on mental flixility which tested an individual’s ability to change their behavior in response to changing circumstances. This evaluation was done by having test participants press a button when they saw the letter W and refrain from pressing then they saw the letter M. The test required them to think fast as they had only half a second to decide whether to press the button or not. Sometimes, the testers changed the rules whereby letter W and letter M switched rules. The test found that conservatives had harder time than liberals when the rules were changed. The mechanics behind the test was a test of anticipation, attention and motivation for error detection. Liberals were found to be better at error detection as when circumstances change, liberals did a better job of immediately activating neural circuits and adjusting their response(s) to the new challenge(s).

What is intelligence?
Many believe that IQ tests are seen as how smart an individual is. However, most experts agree that it is not a measure of general intelligence.
IQ tests test an individual’s ability to make generalizations from incomplete data and find new information using abstract rules. Essentially, it is an individual’s ability to build mental models based on past experiences and how those models will predict what will happen in the future.
All this shows how much of a role the control circuit dopamine plays.
When it comes to intelligence, the ability to make day-to-day decisions stems from having good H&N chemicals that deals with emotions. This is due to most decisions being unable to be approached from a purely rational perspective.
Despite the book stating how dopamine is so essential for one’s ability to think and be creative, H&N chemicals are essential for decision-making. They allow one to be in touch with their emotions and process their emotional information skillfully. H&N chemicals are important for an individual’s ability to make good decisions by having common sense.
A high IQ score may predict how well one does academically. However, it is not a good test for one’s predictability of a happy life.

Approach to things: Dopamine vs H&N chemicals
Dopaminergic people tend to be into action from a distance and planning. While people with high H&N tend to focus on things up close. When it comes to helping, dopaminergic people want the poor to receive more help while H&N people want to provide personal assistance on a personal level.

Couples: liberals (left) and conservatives (right)
The book delineated how conservatives have lesser sex than liberals as conservatives tend to have lesser dopamine and more H&N chemicals. Thus, they are usually in companionate love rather than romantic love.

For a dopaminergic person, the most important part of sex is probably before the main event. This is because the imagined object of desire is over the anticipation. Hence, the thrill will be gone and the orgasm will be anti-climatic. Similar to the buyer’s remorse concept.

Interesting abstract on why red (conservative) states tend to have higher divorce rates.

“Despite higher rates of marital satisfaction, more reliable orgasms, and less cheating, couples in red states are more likely to get divorced than those in blue states. They also consume more pornography. Althoough these findings appear to be counterintuitive, one explanation is that they are the result of a greater culturual emphasis on organized religion. Red state couples are pressured to marry sooner, and they are less likely to live together or have sex prior to marriage. Consequently, the average red state couple has less opportunity to get to know each other before getting married, which may destabilize their marriage. Simiarly, disapproval of premarital sex may lead to greater use of pronography to obtain sexual release.”Abstract from Molecule of More

Thinking: conservatives (right) vs liberals (left)
It was explained how on average, liberals tend to be more forward-thinking, cerebral, inconstant, creative, intelligent and dissatisfied. While conservatives are more likely to be comfortable with emotions, reliable, stable, conventional, less intellectual and happy.

Reliable irrational voter
The author mentioned how rational decisions are fragile. This has to do with the nature of rational decisions, where they are always being revised as new information/evidence surfaces. People tend to be more irrational as irrationality is more enduring as it engages both dopamine and the H&N emotions. The most effective feelings are fear, desire and sympathy. Thus, stirring up fear and encouraging people to hate others are the side effects of political campaigns.

It hurts more when we have loved something
Humans tend to be loss aversion where the pain of loss is stronger relative to the pleasure of gain. To make sense of why people are loss averse, dopamine and H&N chemicals can help one make sense of it. When a person loses something, the amygdala gives off feelings of distress. This is due to H&N chemicals being released. Knowing how H&N chemicals are present-oriented rather than future-oriented helps to explain why it accentuates feelings of fear and distress. Through an experiment, they found that when the amygdala (H&N chemicals ) was absent, loss aversion was gone.
Furthermore, the loss is an addition of dopamine and H&N chemicals. While the gain is only dopaminergic. Loss involves dopamine as well as it is a loss about the future and a loss for H&N chemicals as it affects the present. Those it is essentially 2 over 1 – explaining why people are loss aversed.

How to make someone liberal
When people imagined themselves with superpowers, they tend to become more liberal. This is because they felt less vulnerable which suppressed feelings of H&N chemicals – allowing dopamine to switch on and affect one’s idealogy.
Another aspect to bear in mind is abstract thinking which is essentially powered by dopamine. Abstract thinking enables one to go beyond the sensory observation of events to construct mental models that explain why things happen.
It was also researched that describing how had no effect on one’s attitudes but describing why raises the conservative individuals’ feelings of liking and warmth for the other groups.

The trolley dilemma: Distance matters
The trolley problem that discusses whether one should sacrifice their life for many can be further elucidated by distance. When it comes to making decisions such as the trolley problem, distance plays a pivotal role. Referencing back to how dopamine aims to maximize resources and H&N chemicals tend to be suppressed, pushing a person to sacrifice compared to switching a switch from a very far away place plays a big difference.
The difference lies in the concept that the further the distance, the easier it is to tolerate the degree of harm in service for the greater good. The difference lies in H&N chemicals having lesser opportunities to be triggered when it is far away as it is about the present and does not elicit as many feelings of distress.

Work: H&N chemicals and dopamine
H&N chemicals bring about feelings of satisfaction and it is time to stop. Dopamine on the other hand never rests.

Chapter 6: Progress

Gene that elicits adventure
Dopamine is found to increase exploratory behaviour. Research also found that individuals with the 7R alleles of the DRD4 gene migrated further. This is due to the gene having more dopamine – causing them to seek and explore more.

Cocaine and dopamine
Within the dopamine system, the dopamine transporter serves as a vacuum cleaner. Its primary role is to limit the amount of time dopamine spends stimulating the cells around. When dopamine is released, the system releases its store of dopamine. The dopamine then binds itself to other brain cells. In order to stop the interaction between dopamine and other cells, the dopamine transporter will suck the dopamine back into the cell.
Cocaine blocks the dopamine transporter – allowing dopamine to interact with the receptors once again. Thus, people will experience increased energy, goal-directed activity and sexual drive.

Dopamine of inventors, entrepreneurs, and Nobel prize winners
An interesting fact was mentioned about how in 2005, 52% of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrant entrepreneurs when only 13% of the population of the US are immigrants. The country that provided America with the greatest number of technology entrepreneurs in India.

Despite this statistic, immigrants are not only seen launching tech companies. They are also launching different businesses throughout America. It is found that individuals who have more dopamine are more likely to launch a business.

Dopamine the conductor
Despite dopamine being a small part of our brain, it is the main conductor rather than the orchestrator of actions. Dopamine provides the starting point but many different parts of the body come together to evoke action. Out of the many things done throughout the day, most actions are automatic. This is done so as it will allow individuals to bypass the brain that weighs options and choice-making.

Balance
As individuals, there is a need to achieve a better balance between dopamine and H&N chemicals. The challenge is to overcome the obsession with more while appreciating the unlimited complexity of the world and enjoying the things we already have. Essentially, it is the call for individuals to desire to learn, create and discover while always being grateful for what we have.

Chapter 7: Harmony

The balance between Dopamine and H&Ns
The book enumerated how too much dopamine leads to productive misery while too much H&N leads to laziness. Hence, for one to live a meaningful and happy life, it is vital to strike a balance between dopamine and H&Ns.

Mastery
When one achieves mastery in one area, dopamine reaches its peak as it is able to maximize whatever resources are available. It reaches a moment where one arrives at the moment to savour one’s labour. Hence, mastery is the point where dopamine bows to H&N. This is due to dopamine doing all it can possibly do – allowing H&N to take over one’s happiness circuits. Dopamine does not interfere as it approves feelings of contentment.
Another aspect of mastery is achieving an internal locus of control. It refers to the tendency to view one’s choices and experiences as being under one’s control as opposed to being determined by date, luck and other people. Thus, people with a strong sense of internal locus of control tend to achieve academic success and get high-paying jobs.
The development of an internal locus of control and contentment comes from achieving mastery of an activity. The hurdle comes in the amount of time and effort to reach mastery. It is a constant challenge for one to get out of their comfort zone.

Rewards of reality: Reward prediction error
The reward prediction error is the discovery that something is better than what one has anticipated. Interestingly, dopamine does whatever it can to prevent reward prediction errors. The joy and benefit that comes from reward prediction error are from the dopamine circuits getting excited over the novel and unexpected things. However, being surprised by it means that the resource is not fully utilized. Hence, dopamine in its goal to maximize its available resources will aim to make sure that the surprise will not happen again. Essentially, dopamine is reducing reward prediction error which is the very thing making things better.
For one to ensure reward prediction error keeps on coming, one has to always pay attention to reality as it is the richest source of unexpectedness. When something novel activates dopamine, it brings us to attention. It is also mentioned how the most complex environments are filled with more things that can increase dopamine. These complex environments usually come naturally.

Taking microbreaks
Microbreaks (40 seconds) with exposure to nature help with concentration. It is good to have plants around one’s working area as it uses H&N stimulation to activate dopamine.

Do not multitask
The book debunks how multitasking is actually impossible. When one attempts to do more than one thing at a time, it ends up compromising on both aspects

One makes more mistakes when one tries to multitask. Despite the interruptions being momentary, the amount taken to switch from one task to another requires concentration. It is both distraction and the need to constantly switch back and forth that consumes one mental energy. This results in fatigue kicking in faster which makes it harder to concentrate.

Mixing dopamine and H&Ns
It is pivotal to engage in activities that engage both dopamine and H&Ns. Activities such as woodworking, knitting, painting, decorating and sewing are activities that engage both. They require one to use both their brains and hands to create something new.
Another activity is to fix things as it boosts self-efficacy and increases one’s internal locus of control. This allows H&N to deliver dopaminergic gratification.

Work: Mixing both dopamine & H&Ns
When it comes to working relationships, it is important that both work (dopamine) and friendship (H&Ns) are mixed together.

When it comes to dopamine and H&Ns, the most important is to have both abstract thought and sensory reality working together.

Key Points

Dopamine
– Chemical of anticipation
– Always craving unexpectedness
– Always looking forward to the future
– Maximising available resources

Here & Nows
– Living in the moment
– Appreciating the present
– Gratitude

1. Love

• Romantic love: Anticipation from the unexpected. Decrease in romantic love is due to lower amount of dopamine due to decrease in unexpectedness
• Companionship love: Engaging with reality
• Long-term love: Letting H&N be the anchor for the relationship
• Romantic to companionship love: Anticipation to experience, fastasy to reality

2. Drugs

• H&Ns: Appreciating what is already achieved/had
• Dopamine: Driver that fuels passion
• Buyer’s remorse: Anticipation/expectations > Product/experience
• Drunkedness: How fast one drinks (increase in dopamine)
• Games: Anticipation of getting better, socialising and a general increase in dopamine
• Porn: Easy access. Increase consumption = Wilder content to get same increase in dopamine
• Nicotine: Relieving craving itself

3. Domination

• Confidence: To increase confidence, it starts from believing in oneself first
• Planning: Dopamine control circuit improves through delayed graitifcation > instant gratification. Reward from planning leads to increase in dopamine from making the future better.
• Tenacity: Being used to failure and pain. Increase in hunger for _ leads to increase in dopamine. Increase in tenacity comes from increase in confidence.
• Winning: Dopamine looks for the process rather than the outcome.
• How to gain: Learning how gain comes through deference, humility and obedience
• Relationships:
  • Affliative (H&Ns)
  • Agentic (Dopamine)
• Willpower: Finite resource. Put willpower into more important things

4. Creativity & Madness

• Salience: What one thinks is important is what our mind focuses on
• Categorising: Mind unconsciously categorises what is important and unimportant
• Mental models: Models that our minds deem important. Builds through learning new things
• Mental time travel: Tool to imagine the future. Future imagined depoends on mental models. Quality of imagined future = Quality of mental models
• Fixing/Improving mental models:
  • Why there are bad ones: Lack of information, difficulty abstracting thinking, stubborn persistence of wrong assumptions
  • How to build better ones: Keep good ones discard bad ones, learn from the eminiment dea ones, learn from great philosophers and researchers.
• Creativity: Attaching non-essential & essential aspects of reality together
• Analogies: Linking & merging unrelated ideas together
• Dreams: Thinking about the problem right before sleeping and recording it once awake by actively recalling it
• Nobel prize winners: Gaining the ability to look beyond the world of the sense into a world of abstract ideas
• Genuises are jerks: High dopamine thus suppressed H&Ns. H&Ns ties to empathy while dopamine ties to maximizing future resources

5. Politics

• Liberals & Conservatives:
  • High dopamine = Manipulative, toughminded, etc = Liberals (left/democrats)
  • High H&Ns = Empathetic, etc = Conservatives (right/republicans)
• IQ: Making generalizations from incomplete data and finding new information using abstract rules. Meaning, building mental models based on past experiences and how these models predict the future
• Decision-making: Need high H&Ns. DEals with daily decisions that have to be approached from not just a rational perspective.
• Loss aversion:
  • Gain = Dopamine (future)
  • Loss = Dopamine (future) + H&Ns (fear & stress)
• Irrationality: Due to both dopamine and H&Ns
• Approach:
  • High dopamine: Action from a distance & planning
  • High H&Ns: Up-close and personal
• Making a liberal: Making them feel less vulnerable

6+7. Progress + Harmony

• Inventors, entrepreneurs and nobel prize winners: High dopamine
• Balance: Overcome obsession with more while appreciating the unlimited complexity of the world & enjoying the things one already have
• Too much:
  • Dopamine: Productive misery
  • H&Ns: Laziness
• Mastery: Allows one to turn to H&Ns instead. Requires one to step out of their comfort zone constantly
• Reward prediction error: Something better than expected = increase dopamine
• Microbreaks: 40 seconds exposure to nature
• Multi-tasking: Do not multi-task. Distraction + fatigue from re-concentrating
• Mixing: Having activities that engages both brain and hands
• Work: Work (dopamine) + friendship (H&Ns) is better

Key Application

• Balancing dopamine & H&Ns: Attaching dopamine to delayed gratification (reward from planning & effort). Being constantly grategul and enjoying the present
• Stop multi-tasking
• Building better mental models through keeping good concepts and removing wrong concepts/assumptions
• Be comfortable with discomfort & pain constantly
• Place hardest acitivites to the start of the day (willpower is finite)
• What we focus on is what our brain deems as salient
• Avoid buyer’s remorse (have higher experience rather than expectations)
• Do no stack dopamine (games, porn, drugs, alcohol, etc)
• Long-lasting love comes from companionship love (H&Ns)