Thrill Seeking vs Groove Seeking
I’ve been thinking about different forms of pleasure through the lens of Friston’s free energy principle (see this and that post).
Pleasure is the brain’s way of taming our inner beast. It’s the carrot our brain gives us when we do something which serves its ends. According to Friston, the brain’s goal is to minimise free energy / surprise. So when we do something which minimises free energy, our brain should reward us with a shot of pleasure.
There are two ways we can minimise free energy (these correspond to strategy 1 and strategy 3 of my earlier post):
‘Thrill seeking’ - seeking out new stimuli in order to enrich and develop our model of the world, making it a better predictor of the world in the future, thus reducing future surprise / free energy.
‘Groove seeking’ - staying within the confines of our model - avoiding surprising new stimuli.
It’s interesting that these diametrically opposed behaviours both serve the brain’s purpose of minimising free energy. At first blush, thrill seeking sounds (to me) ‘better’ than groove seeking - but I actually think the reverse is true.
‘Thrill seeking’ is that heady rush of the new. A new place, new people, a new activity, a new taste. With each new experience, our model of the world gets better, meaning it will be better able to predict the future. The brain rewards this behaviour with pleasure as it’s an investment in the future - eventually, with a good enough model, we will avoid surprises. We will find our groove.
‘Groove seeking’ is comfortable, ‘sticking to what we know’. This, really, is what the brain is ultimately after. A state of being in a groove is a state of total unsurprise, of zero free energy.
I’ve long been fascinated by ‘groove’ in a musical sense. Some songs pull you in and sweep you along. Even if you’re hearing them for the first time, you feel you’ve known them all your life. Each segment leads into the next naturally - there are no jarring transitions, no off-putting surprises. The song is as I would have written it if I had the talent. If a song has ‘groove’ I find I can completely lose myself in it. Everyone’s musical brain is different - a song which has ‘groove’ for me may not have ‘groove’ for you.
That’s what a groove seeking experience is like. The pure pleasure of predictability. This might sound boring, but I believe this is a more complete form of pleasure than thrill seeking. The pleasure you feel from thrill seeking is the brain rewarding you for making a better model so that, ultimately, you can be a better groove seeker.
Thrill seeking is adventure, risk, pushing boundaries, reaching, striving.
Groove seeking is appreciating what you have, mindfulness, contentment, effortlessness.
A cat purrs when you stroke it because it’s in a groove. The pleasing predictable rhythm of your stroking hand is a low-free-energy stimulus - the cat knows exactly what’s coming next. It’s the same class of pleasure as the sea breaking rhythmically on a beach, or as coming home, or smelling your lover’s familiar smell. Buddha under the bodhi tree, purely mindful, was in the ultimate groove.
Perhaps we should be thrill seekers for the first portion of our life, voraciously expanding our model of the world (and thus our ‘menu of grooves’) then devote our remaining years to loving our grooves. This reminds me a bit of Hannah Fry’s suggested strategy for finding the ideal parter: date anyone and everyone for the first third of your ‘dating shelf life’ (dumping them all), and thereafter once you find someone who’s better than all the previous people you’ve dated, stick with them.
I suppose in reality we need a blend of both (as is always the way) - but I think today’s society overemphasises thrill seeking, when groove seeking may be the key to true happiness. Just ask my cat…
PS - I’ve made a Spotify playlist of songs which get me in a groove. Any of them ‘groovy’ for you?