James Harbaugh

“This synergistic character of nonlinear systems is precisely what makes them so difficult to analyze. They can’t be taken apart. The whole system has to be examined all at once, as a coherent entity. As we’ve seen earlier, this necessity for global thinking is the greatest challenge in understanding how large systems of oscillators can spontaneously synchronize themselves. More generally, all problems about self-organization are fundamentally nonlinear. So the study of sync has always been entwined with the study of nonlinearity.”
― Steven H. Strogatz, Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

“(1) reward is not contentment, and pleasure is not happiness; (2) reward is dopamine, and contentment is serotonin; (3) chronic excess reward interferes with contentment; (4) business has conflated pleasure with happiness consciously and with clear-cut intent, specifically to get you to buy its junk or engage in hedonic behaviors favorable to industry; (5) government has passed legislation to make it easier to buy that junk or make easier access to engage in those behaviors to drive profit and GDP, and the Supreme Court has justified and supported these practices; and (6) buying that junk or engaging in those behaviors long-term and without thought can leave you and society fat, sick, stupid, broke, addicted, depressed, and most decidedly unhappy.”
― Robert H. Lustig, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains

“Importantly, intrinsic motivation seems the more potent kind, because, you could argue, the rewards come from within our own brains.42 The contradiction produced here is that sometimes if you coerce people into doing something via rewards like financial incentives, they feel less like it’s their decision to do it, so their motivation becomes contingent on said rewards. Basically, once the reward is received/removed, the associated motivation fades away. This doesn’t seem to happen if it stems from an internal, personal source, if it’s our own decision to do it. One study focused on children who were given art supplies to play with.”
― Dean Burnett, Happy Brain: Where Happiness Comes From, and Why

“three pillars of self-determination—autonomy, competence, and community”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging