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Why People Do Stupid Things

A friend of mine and me once talked briefly about the one time in our lives we’d been drunk (as teenagers), and we found ourselves wondering what in the world would make a person want to experience a hang-over more than once. He enjoys a glass of wine now and then, and I consume approximately 3-5 drinks per year - so we’re not anti-alcohol, but we’re of the opinion that getting drunk is just plain stupid.

The same day I read about Jarle Trå who at the time was hospitalized after managing to climb Mount Everest without extra oxygen. This short article about it (hard to find much about this in English) also mentions a few people who’ve died attempting to climb Mount Everest.

These things made me curious. Trying to climb Mount Everest is pretty stupid (extremely risky with absolutely no benefits for anyone, except bragging rights), doing it without oxygen is insane. Sky diving may be fun, but is, objectively speaking, stupid. Other things that are seen as fun, challenging, and entertaining, and still, yet again objectively speaking, really stupid are:

• trying to become the Ultimate Fighting Champion
• gambling with large sums of money
• getting drunk/high
• base jumping

And so on and so forth… People do stupid things all the time (yes, me too, though none of the things mentioned here).

Why?

The short answer is: Chemistry. Brain chemistry to be exact.

OK, not really news to anyone I hope - but I got curious, and wanted to know exactly how this works. It seems some people are natural thrill-seekers. The pleasure centers of their brains get a much stronger high from the release of dopamine than low thrill-seekers because their brains have fewer auto-receptors (cells that act as brakes to stop the release of dopamine). Since this high is so strong, these people are likely to do crazy things to make their brain release lots of dopamine. For the rest of us, it simply isn’t worth the risk because we don’t derive nearly as much pleasure from the experience.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying these people are stupid. They just do stupid things far more often than the rest of us do, and more extreme things. Of course, there are exceptions, like fire fighters who get the same high from rescuing someone from a burning building, all the while saving someone’s life. They don’t do it just for the high, of course, but I’m willing to bet (not money, that would be stupid) that the high is a big part of it. That’s fine. They’re taking huge risks, but the rewards are equally great. Sky diving for fun is only slightly more stupid than cutting yourself all over the place with a sharp knife and then going swimming with 50 hammerhead sharks ‘cause hey, at least the sharks get a good meal out of it.

If you’re getting the impression that I think doing something very risky, for nothing but a dopamine high, is selfish and stupid - then you’re spot on. But hey, it’s only human. We tend to have trouble with rationality from time to time. Also, once in a while an extraordinarily dedicated thrill-seeker will advance technology in order to get more out of the experience, and sometimes that advancement can be applied to other (useful) fields of study. So it’s not all bad all the time, just most of the time.

These thrill-seekers are, sadly, much more likely than the rest of us to use illegal drugs and to commit impulsive crimes. It’s not their fault, they’re wired that way. For them to stay on the right side of the law, a high degree of self-control and moral integrity is required. Most high thrill-seekers have adequate amounts of these personality traits to keep out of serious trouble, of course, but those who don’t often end up committing crimes that are seemingly without reward. Their reward is actually the high they get from trying not to get caught or killed. There are other, psychological, factors in play here too, as in all things human, but chemistry plays a significant role. Since a lot of these crimes are impulsive in nature, high thrill-seekers who tend to live in the grey (or black) areas of the law, should at the very least make sure they eat healthy to ensure a steady supply of serotonin, and in extreme cases might benefit from serotonin-enhancing medication, because it helps control our impulsivity and decision-making process.

While reading up on all of this I had a thought: Could bungee-jumping, sky diving, or preferably something equally dopamine-generating but more useful, help keep some criminals from reoffending and drug addicts from relapsing? That combined with some courses on self-control and on-the-spot consequence analysis might do a lot of good. I’m quite sure I’m not the first person to think of this - so it’s good to know there is a viable treatment for these people to replace the in-and-out-of-jail loop.

This is all quite fascinating stuff, and if you’re interested I highly recommend this short article explaining the dopamine/auto-receptor thing, and this article on dopamine high in relation to gambling, and this article on the “Arousal Theory” of criminology.

Fascinating Outlets for Creativity

On Amazon.com there are over twelve hundred reviews of “Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz”. That might come as a shock to those who didn’t know Amazon sells groceries, but let me tell you straight away - there’s hardly anything Amazon doesn’t sell.

One might think there would be some kind of limit to what there is to say about any one type of milk, but as the internet shows us time and time again, there are no (known) limits to human creativity. It’s also true that limitation is the mother of creativity. Most of these milk reviews are incredibly creative and many are even, surprisingly, very interesting and/or funny. Like this one (click on it to open it in a new window/tab, so it’s easier to read):

or this one:

When you think about it, it’s actually the perfect way to hone your creative writing skills. Simply find a seemingly mundane object and do your best to incorporate it into a short-story which also serves as a review of the object. If you publish such writing on places like Amazon.com you could even be lucky enough to receive constructive criticism on your writing, and it could be seen by thousands of people.

This sort of thing makes me wonder what other hidden treasures can be found in the dark forgotten corners of the internet.

Tiny. Really, really tiny.

If you’re like me, you sometimes find yourself wondering “what’s out there?”, in the cosmic sense. I like thinking about things like that, because it really gives the imagination free reign. One of the main reasons I like science-fiction so much is that I find it fascinating to see what other people have imagined existing out there. It’s especially interesting when people imagine things that are quite a bit “outside the box”, like aliens who communicate not through speech, but through the projection of light at various frequencies, for example.

I find it odd that there are people who don’t believe in extra-terrestial intelligent life. Don’t they realize how mind-bogglingly tiny we are compared to the entire universe? It’s virtually impossible for anyone (except maybe for Stephen Hawking) to imagine how tiny we are without some kind of visual aide (like this). It’s completely impossible to calculate the probability of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. That article says there’s a 0.01% probability of intelligent life evolving on any given earth-like planet. However, given the sheer amount of earth-like planets that most likely exist, the addition rule of probability would make the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe a virtual certainty.

How many earth-like planets exist? No one has the faintest idea, of course - but we know of about 418 exoplanets (as I write this), and it seems that approximately one third of those are likely to be earth-like. It’s not too far fetched to think that this statistic holds true for the rest of the universe, that is, if we keep to the usual practice of assuming things out there work like they do in “our neighborhood” - which is natural since it’s the only thing we have to go on.

Another thing I find strange is that most of the people talking about extra-terrestial intelligent life assume it can only exist on earth-like planets and that it must be similar to life on earth. I’ve always found the idea of intelligent life with sulfuric acid for “blood” (for example), breathing carbon monoxide (for example), to be quite intuitive. I mean, scientists have known about extremophiles for quite some time now, and still most people automatically assume intelligent extra-terrestial life must be similar to life on earth. People ARE writing about extremophiles and their extra-terrestial potential though, so lets hope more people discover this line of thought and take their blinders off when conducting research into these matters.

So, the universe is big. Really big. And thus intelligent life somewhere out there is actually probable.

The above mentioned visual aide does a darn good job of showing us how incredibly tiny we are, but if we assume the universe is infinite our mind just blacks out. First, try to imagine that our universe is not infinite. OK, so it has clearly defined boundaries. Now imagine that what we call our universe is the equivalent of an atom in a much bigger universe, and that an atom in our universe is an entire universe in itself. And so on and so forth in both directions… Add infinite parallel universes to that and you’re well on your way to conceptualizing an infinite universe. The Big Bang could simply be a reaction to something in this “super universe” that ours could be a part of.

I do realize that all this has really accomplished is moving the “where did we come from” pseudo-answer from one place to another. It is, sadly, a question that will never ever be answered - unless, of course, there is a God and he tells us at some point. In some ways though, I kind of prefer not knowing everything about all of existence since I like imagining how it all fits together. It gives us the option of imagining cool stuff like there being 10 dimensions.