Play Is Not Just a Mean to an End

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Intrinsic motivation is like, central to and i like that he talks about that, right? Even psychologists, when they're studying play, usually focus on play as a means to some other end. I think it's more just part of just that western attitude of everything is a means to an end. Everything is instrumental. And you don't need a theory about why you and i would want to do something that gets us into a flow state because it's just rewarding of itself. But then, of course, you can ask the question, so like, why would creatures like us have that? And that becomes an evolutionary question.

David and Tamler lose themselves in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (pr. ‘chick sent me high’) classic paper on the concept of flow. We talk about the features of flow activities – loss of ego, the merging of your awareness with the activity, and autotelic (not what you think) enjoyment. What makes flow activities so rewarding? Do you need to develop skills over many years to experience them? Do easy and natural social interactions count as flow?

Plus as men of pure virtue, we call an audible and choose not to make fun of a recent paper (with a student as lead author). Instead we pilot a not fully formed idea: “Substack Starters." Now that the economy is tanking, do we have any heterodox beliefs that might lead to profitable Substacks?