Reproduction gives instant gratification, too.

Was it really all that different 200,000 years ago though? I mean, once you’ve achieved self-awareness and you realize you’re going to die someday in the future, you’re set up for a life of chronic stress no matter what your day-to-day looks like.

Of course—as I’m sure someone will point out—the evolution of the human brain is a very complicated subject! And this is a broad simplification. But it’s certainly interesting to posture that our information-based societies are indeed very recent and very different from the environments in which we predominantly…