902: Michael Easter | Rewiring Your Scarcity Brain in a World of Excess

Author Michael Easter discusses the scarcity brain and how it works against us in the modern world. He explains how scarcity loops can harm us in the long term. Michael Easter also shares insights on manufacturing scarcity loops and how they can be broken. He explores how scarcity loops can be gamed for positive benefit.

Episode metadata

Episode title: 902: Michael Easter | Rewiring Your Scarcity Brain in a World of Excess
Show: The Jordan Harbinger Show
Owner / Host: Jordan Harbinger
Episode link: open in Snipd
Episode publish date: 2023-09-26

Show notes

Tired of constantly craving what you don't have instead of being satisfied with what you do?
Scarcity Brain author Michael Easter is here to help!
What We Discuss with Michael Easter:
- What is the scarcity brain that helped humans evolve to run the planet, and how does it work against us in the context of the modern world?
- How the scarcity loop operates like a "serial killer" of motivation to push us into repeat behaviors that can be fun in the short term, but have the potential to harm us in the long term.
- What causes us to manufacture the scarcity loops that can ruin our lives with minimal prompting and what can pigeons teach us about how the scarcity brain processes gambling?
- How we can break these scarcity loops when they're so entrenched in every aspect of our behavior.
- How scarcity loops can be gamed for positive benefit.

Episode AI notes

The book 'Scarcity Brain' explores the reasons why individuals struggle with moderation and constantly crave more, even when everything is fine in moderation.
Humans evolved to crave and hoard scarce resources for survival over millions of years, but despite the shift to abundance, we are still compelled to consume excessively.
The three parts in getting humans to repeat a behavior are opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability.
Changing the environment and becoming aware of behavior can help break free from the scarcity loop.
Gamifying everyday behaviors can lead to a shift in focus and a devaluation of important aspects of everyday life.

Quick Takeaways

Understanding and breaking free from the scarcity loop can lead to healthier behaviors and greater fulfillment in modern times.
Scarcity loops affect various aspects of daily life, such as social media, shopping, addiction, and video games, and require conscious effort to overcome.
The pursuit of status is deeply ingrained in human nature, and recognizes its influence can help individuals understand their own behaviors and decision-making.
Practical strategies for breaking free from scarcity loops involve altering environments, questioning underlying motives, and seeking alternative sources of fulfillment.

Deep Dives

The Scarcity Brain and Its Impact on Modern Behavior

The podcast explores the concept of the scarcity brain, which is the evolved pattern of thought that compels humans to constantly seek more. It discusses how this scarcity brain was crucial for survival in the past when resources were limited, but is maladaptive in modern times. The episode highlights various behaviors that stem from this scarcity brain, such as overeating, hoarding possessions, and being addicted to drugs and social media. It emphasizes the need to be aware of these behaviors and offers strategies to break free from the scarcity loop, such as changing environments, altering the three components of the loop (opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability), and cultivating awareness. The discussion also touches on the relationship between status and the scarcity brain, noting its evolutionary importance and its impact on human behavior in society.

The Impact of Scarcity Loops in Daily Life

The podcast episode examines how scarcity loops affect various aspects of daily life, including social media, shopping, addiction, and video games. It highlights how humans are drawn to behaviors that offer opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. Examples are given, such as how social media platforms utilize gamification to keep users engaged and how shopping apps create a sense of scarcity to drive purchases. The episode emphasizes the need to recognize and consciously challenge these behavioral patterns. Strategies to break free from scarcity loops are discussed, such as limiting screen time, implementing waiting periods before making a purchase, and finding alternative sources of stimulation and enjoyment.

The Role of Status and its Impact on Behavior

The podcast delves into the role of status and its influence on human behavior. It explains how the pursuit of status is deeply ingrained in human nature due to its historical benefits in survival and social hierarchy. The episode touches on the negative emotions that can arise from desiring and valuing status, as well as the societal pressure to downplay its importance. It explores how status cues can trigger behaviors like air rage incidents on airplanes, and how the recognition of status-related motivations can help individuals better understand their own actions. The discussion encourages listeners to reflect on their relationship with status and consider how it may impact their daily lives and decision-making.

Breaking Free from Scarcity Loops and Cultivating Awareness

The podcast provides practical strategies for breaking free from scarcity loops and fostering greater self-awareness. It suggests becoming aware of the behaviors and situations that trigger scarcity loops and actively questioning their underlying motives. The episode highlights the importance of altering environments, tweaking the three components of scarcity loops (opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability), and seeking alternative sources of fulfillment. Examples are given, such as reframing social media usage, implementing waiting periods for purchases, and finding healthier ways to engage with challenges and rewards. The discussion encourages listeners to reflect on their own behaviors, make conscious choices, and cultivate a more balanced approach to their desires and needs.

The Influence of Status and Gamification on Society

Status has become a quantifiable and gamified concept, with people seeking validation through social media followers, likes, or salary. Different individuals seek and measure status in various ways, leading to a loop around status divorced from reality. This phenomenon can create divisions based on income, social media following, job positions, and other arbitrary markers. Furthermore, the introduction of gamification in everyday activities can mislabel achievements and lead to a focus on points and rewards rather than the original goal. It is important to recognize when status becomes a driving force in decision-making and consider alternative perspectives outside of quantified status markers.

The Impact of Information Overload and Online Brain

The internet and digital media have revolutionized how we consume information, but it has also brought negative consequences. The constant availability of information has led to an overwhelmed and distracted mindset, hindering our ability to focus and retain information. Online sources have replaced deep research, leading to confirmation bias and echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs. The rise of conspiracy theories and the hoarding of information are just some of the negative outcomes of information overload. Striving for balance, limiting online consumption, and seeking reliable sources are essential for navigating the online brain.

The Influence of Excess in Food, Shopping, and Hoarding

Excess has become prevalent in various aspects of modern life, including food consumption, shopping, and hoarding. Processed food, fast food, and overeating have contributed to alarming rates of obesity and health issues. Consumerism and the drive for status have created a culture of excessive shopping and accumulation of material possessions. The ease of online shopping and the rise of storage unit usage further emphasize this trend. Understanding the underlying psychological factors and developing a healthy relationship with food, shopping, and possessions is crucial to combatting excess in our lives.

Snips

[06:40] Scarcity Brain

🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (06:40 - 07:12)

✨ Summary

The book 'Scarcity Brain' delves into the concept of why people struggle with moderation despite knowing that everything is fine in moderation. It explores the reasons behind why individuals continue consuming even when full, shopping excessively despite owning a lot, and engaging in activities that do not necessarily improve mental health. The book aims to understand the underlying factors driving this inability to feel satisfied and the persistent pursuit of more.

📚 Transcript

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Speaker 2

So my book is called scarcity brain. And what it looks at is that everyone knows that everything is fine in moderation. So then the question is, well, why do we all suck so bad at it? Why do we seem to never be able to find enough? People keep eating when they're full. We often find ourselves shopping when we already own a ton of stuff. We scroll through social media or keep binging news when we know it's not necessarily improving our mental health. So the book looks at that. It looks at why can't we get enough? And what are the things that we seem to not be able to get enough of and why?

[07:50] Evolution and Abundance in Human Behavior

🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (07:50 - 08:39)

✨ Summary

Humans evolved to crave and hoard scarce resources such as food, possessions, information, influence, and status for survival over millions of years. It was a survival advantage to consume more food than needed, hoard items, and seek information. However, in recent times, there has been an abundance of these resources, yet humans are still compelled to consume and hoard, despite the shift in the environment.

📚 Transcript

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Speaker 2

So when you think about how humans evolve, everything we needed to survive in the past, it was all scarce and it was all hard to find, right? So everything from food to possessions to information, even influence and status, the number of people we could influence, all hard to find, all scarce. And we live like that for basically two and a half million years, all of time. And it wasn't until very recently in the grand scheme of time that we started to get abundance of all these things that were sort of built to crave, right? So in the past, it always made sense to eat more food than you needed if you had the opportunity to hoard items, to try and get as much information as you can to just keep seeking information. All that would give you a survival advantage. And then our environments flip and now we have an abundance of all this stuff and we're still compelled to just consume and consume all this stuff.

[14:52] The Three Parts of Getting Humans to Repeat a Behavior

🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (14:52 - 15:32)

✨ Summary

The three parts in getting humans to repeat a behavior are opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. Opportunity signifies that the behavior can result in something valuable. Unpredictable rewards involve receiving the valuable outcome, but without knowing when or how much, as seen in slot machines. Quick repeatability allows for immediate repetition of the behavior, such as playing a slot machine again and again.

📚 Transcript

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Speaker 2

And he basically said, if you want to get a human to repeat a behavior, often to their detriment, the thing is got to have three parts. Okay, so it's got to have opportunity, it's got to have unpredictable rewards, and it's got to have quick repeatability. So opportunity means this behavior can get us something of value. In the case of a slot machine, it's money. Second, unpredictable rewards, we know we'll get the thing of value sometime. But we don't know when and we don't know how big it's going to be. So with any slot machine game, you could lose, you can win some quarters, you could win a life change, you can amount of money, right? You have no idea. And then quick repeatability, you can immediately repeat the behavior. So with the slot machine, you can play again and again and again.

[44:48] Breaking Free from the Scarecity Loop

🎧 Play snip - 3min️ (44:48 - 48:04)

✨ Summary

Changing the environment can change behavior; becoming aware of behavior can initiate change. Removing or altering any part of the scarcity loop, such as changing the opportunity or making unpredictable rewards predictable, can help modify behavior. For example, using social media only for specific purposes can break the loop of gamified systems. Slowing down a behavior through strategies like inserting a waiting period for online purchases can also help in breaking the scarcity loop.

📚 Transcript

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Speaker 2

Well, changing an environment will usually change behavior. That's pretty well established in psychology. But I think when you think about getting out of a behavior that falls into a scarcity loop, and there's a lot of them, we fired off a bunch, but there's a lot of them. There's basically three ways. The first way is just by becoming aware of it, behavior will tend to change. So this is something that's called the Hawthorne effect. And it basically says that when behavior is observed, it changes. So this is something that messes up a lot of studies and science, but you can use it to your advantage just by being, oh, like the reason that I have scrolled Twitter for the last half an Hour, because this is my ancient brain falling into this game that used to keep me alive, this search and search and search and looking for something good, right? That's why you're there. And I think that just realizing that you can start to go, okay, I'm normal for doing this at the same time. This is problematic. So I got to find something else to do. The second way is that you can remove or alter any one of the three parts of the scarcity loop. So you can change what the opportunity is. For example, let's take social media, because we were talking about it before, when people go on social media, what tends to happen is that they fall into the likes, the comments, the Retweets, whatever it is, this gamified system. But you could decide like, I don't have to use that gamified system. I could use this to just only keep in touch with family and friends and use the messaging service. I could only follow people from college if I just want to keep in touch with my college friends, right? So there's a lot of different ways that you can use these tools. And then with unpredictable rewards, making those predictable or changing what the unpredictable reward is can help with behavior. So I'll give you an example with food. So one of the reasons that people tend to overeat junk food, and I'm going to quote a guy who's from the food industry here, as he said, if you want to make a food really popular, it's got To have three things. It's got to have value. It's got to have variety. It's got to have velocity. That's just another way of talking about the scarcity loop. So when you think of a variety, there's a reason that there's a ton of different flavors of junk food, and why junk food is so hyper stimulating. And then with velocity, you can eat junk food way faster than you could normal food, right? If you tried to sit down and have 500 calories a broccoli, you'd maybe get to like 100 calories before you were like, God, get me knob done, not so with Doritos, you could eat like 2000 calories In a sitting with unpredictable rewards simply by eating the same thing regularly. That usually tends to reduce how much people eat. That's why we eat more at a buffet. So when people go to a buffet, there's a million different options. It's kind of like unpredictable, like, oh, this could be good. This could be good. We tend to to eat more. And then with slowing a behavior down with the unpredictable rewards, number three, is that if you take the example of shopping, you could do something as simple as saying, okay, I'm Done buying stuff online that I know is available in stores near me because that inserts a pause, a slowness, or you could say, okay, I'm going to put like a three day holding period on Any online purchase I want to make. Because usually just having that time to just be away from the quickness of the act, people will realize, yeah, I actually don't really need that.

[01:02:05] Impact of Gamifying Everyday Behaviors

🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (01:02:05 - 01:02:58)

✨ Summary

Gamifying everyday behaviors with a clear scoring system can lead to a shift in focus from the original goal of the activity to the attainment of points. This can result in a change in behavior and values, where individuals begin to prioritize the points over the actual purpose of the task or activity, potentially leading to a devaluation of important aspects of everyday life.

📚 Transcript

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Speaker 2

So as I mentioned before, it's games work because they give you a very clear score about how good you've done at this thing. One of the problems with gamifying everyday behaviors, I'll explain this, is that with a normal game, like monopoly, like football, that is screened off from everyday life. That is this escape, this diversion, like we're doing this for fun. It's not part of everyday life. We don't take it seriously, right? We realize we're getting these kind of silly points for these sort of fake wins, whatever. But when you start to gamify normal life, you start to really value and react to and abide by silly points for things that maybe aren't silly. So a good example of this would be something like grades, and it tends to change your behavior and what you value. Okay, so you start to value the points rather than the original goal of the activity.