Updated 2 years ago
This was kind of lost in the noise of 2020.
“Because reward-system activity motivates the behaviors that produce it, individuals who experience insight-related neural rewards are likely to engage in further creativity-related activities, potentially to the exclusion of other activities—a notion that many puzzle aficionados, mystery-novel devotees, starving artists and underpaid researchers may find familiar.”
Note the very short delay between Insight and Reward. It is near instantaneous. Subliminal. Hardwired.
And it results in, basically, emergent self-hacking mixed with a tinge of autoeroticism.
Starving artists are junkies, in a way, seeking that high. I am one, making this website. Artists are internally driven. They don’t need approval, or money. Nothing can compete with that feeling of insights becoming neurochemically rewarded.
And as for drugs… the LSD experience gives these creative-attuned people a similar “rush” as cocaine. These are the people attracted to psychedelics and related subcultures such as the Grateful Dead and psytrance. I’d like to call them “Elves.” Seers – metaphysical mentats – running constant simulations that add to humanity’s collective consciousness.
There is a reason this association evolved in humans. It enables one to survive in a complicated and dangerous world.
Full article (for laymen)
Original Abstract
