maanav's thoughts

we just want to feel human again

I was at the gym this morning and couldn’t help but notice something: Isn’t it kinda weird that humans now have these indoor spaces called gyms where all we do is lift artificially heavy objects a few times a week? Our ancestors were more ripped than us without ever needing to do pull-push-legs; they actually just moved around and lifted things in their natural lifestyle. Yeah, I know it’s hard to imagine but you had to physically move to survive back then.

This is a broader pattern I’ve been seeing. There are primal human needs that humans satisfied in their lives earlier but can’t satisfy anymore, and so we construct “simulations” to fulfill these instead.

If you think about it, we see these simulations everywhere:

• Gambling and casinos: Humans have an inherent desire to take risk. In a world where people’s lives become increasingly monotonous and risk-off, gambling is the simulation where they direct their risk-on energy. I was also reading an interview recently with a casino which highlighted that slot machines, for example, are designed to appeal to humans’ “innate need to find patterns”. One of my high-conviction beliefs is that as humans have less work to do in the future, gambling is going to make them feel “productive” and intellectually stimulated again.

• Pets: It’s no secret that humans are having fewer babies. But evolution has wired us so we have a primal desire to nurture and take care of offspring. Pets (and more broadly, pet-like toys like Tamagotchi) are the simulation we’ve constructed to fulfill this human desire. Cats and dogs are just the Costco version of babies.

• Movies and video games: This is probably the most obvious. When we were hunter-gatherers we naturally just had conflict and adrenaline in our lives. Now we watch action movies and play first-person-shooter games to feel the same way. When people say Marvel movies are escapist, what they really mean is we want to escape to a former version of our own species.

In general, thinking through the lens of Simulated Primality will prove to be an effective way to identify things that produce outlier outcomes. It involves asking two simple questions:

For (1), there are a few things that are clear. Humans need to feel like they belong in a tribe, but we are becoming increasingly lonely. We need to feel productive and view ourselves as providers. But there’s going to be less work to do and less stability around traditional careers because of automation, devaluation of fiat, etc. We need to take care of offspring, but we’re not having enough babies anymore.

Given this, here’s a few things I’m bullish on for the decade ahead:

• Digital pets: It’s human nature to nurture. I think we’re going to see a lot more digital pets and Tamagotchi-like toys that humans can take care of, with AI in the loop to make them interact and change based on how the human user is raising them.

• Tribalistic products: Humans need to feel like they belong. Sports products are an easy example of this, but one thing I’m particularly excited to see more of is multiplayer/group-chat-based trading apps.

• Productivity porn: Apps like Notion which make people feel like they’re doing work but in reality they’re just moving around boxes and notes and making things look pretty.

• Speculation products: I work in crypto, pretty self-explanatory.

Yes, there will be more “organic” products that try to fill these gaps (i.e. apps that help people join meetup groups and find in-person experiences). But I think the digital form factor wins; people want to fulfill their needs in the lowest-effort and cheapest way, and it’s hard to compete with digital-native products on that.

Again, the products that will win here don’t need to actually help people build community or make them productive, they just need to make people feel like they do. Hopefully reading this post made you feel more “productive” too.