Why we create our suffering
Locally optimal strategies
2022. I couldn’t figure out why I was burned out from everything. “Why are my emotions so irrational?”
Socializing wasn’t going well, crushes were ghosted me, and setting boundaries somehow created even more conflict. Doing stuff had risks.
I thought my bottleneck was burnout. It was actually a solution to another bottleneck.
If doing stuff is risky, then one way to avoid downside is to… avoid actions.
So I unlearned the feelings that made interactions feel risky and I haven’t needed burnout since.
After noticing this pattern — the bottleneck wasn’t the bottleneck, it was a solution to a bigger bottleneck — I started seeing it everywhere…
A different way of understanding suffering
Any persistent bottleneck can be understood from two different points of view:
In the Classical view: Past experiences ‘cause’ the present state: “My burnout is a consequence of previous bad experiences or trauma, which I don’t have control over.”
And the Locally Optimal view: My current state is incentivized by what my nervous system is presently acting to avoid. Burnout wasn’t random, but strategic.
In the classical view, you survey backwards: past events caused the present bottleneck, and the past can’t be changed… so rest in pieces I guess.
In the locally optimal view, you survey forward: your present state is shaped by the futures you want to avoid and the futures you want to achieve.1
The locally optimal view is a hopeful view: your suffering is functional.
My burnout sucked—it was not globally optimal. Even so, it appears to have been the best strategy available at the time — Locally optimal!
So, “why were my emotions so irrational?” Well…
Locally Optimal
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V2.2. 2024 Nov 23 – 2026 Jun 27.
It’s like the efficient market hypothesis, but for lifelong bottlenecks: “If there were zero downsides to improving this, then why hasn’t that happened already?”