In our upcoming August Sequences gathering, we will discuss the essay "Humans Are Not Automatically Strategic." To establish the groundwork for this conversation, it is helpful to look at the evolutionary biology and energy constraints that govern human decision-making.
Although the human brain accounts for only about 2% of our total body weight, it consumes roughly 20% of our body's resting energy. It is a highly expensive piece of hardware to run. Throughout our evolutionary history in resource-scarce environments, survival depended on conserving metabolic energy. Active, deliberate planning—evaluating multiple future scenarios, calculating probabilities, and overriding habits—requires an immense amount of glucose and oxygen. In contrast, habit, routine, and "autopilot" behaviors are incredibly energy-efficient. Our brains evolved to be metabolic misers, shifting as many decisions as possible into passive, low-energy habits to preserve resources for physical survival.
This biological default is why strategic thinking is so rare and difficult. Our brains are naturally wired to resist the cognitive push required to analyze our lives, question our assumptions, and design new plans. When faced with complexity, we do not automatically stop and plan; instead, we default to whatever routine or cultural path of least resistance is available. The brain treats active strategy as an emergency energy drain to be avoided whenever possible.
This August, we will discuss how to identify the areas where we are running on default metabolic conservation. We will explore how to introduce deliberate friction to wake our brains from their energy-saving mode, forcing the expensive cognitive hardware to power up and orient us toward what is actually worth doing.