made to crave

Food, Gamification and the Scarcity Loop

I’ve just finished the mind-blowing new book Scarcity Brain by author and fellow Substacker Michael Easter. The book explores how science that originated in the casino industry has been adopted by industries all across the world, and now permeates every aspect of modern life.

The heart of Easter’s argument is what he calls the “scarcity loop.” He says that humans (and indeed, all animals) are hard-wired to seek out things of value, succeed or fail in that attainment, and then try, try again — a three-step process that he calls opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. It’s a process that we find irresistibly attractive, though never completely satisfying.

In our ancient ancestors, this meant 1) going on a hunt and attempting to bring down a wooly mammoth, 2) either feasting on wooly burgers or going hungry, and 3) heading off to chase the next meal. The scarcity loop was an advantage, in that pre-Flintstone era. It gave us the persistence and tenacity to find the food, tools, and information we needed to stay alive. It made us perfectly adapted to a world where all these things were, well, scarce.

The problem, Easter says, is that we still have that ancient wiring, even though these days, scarcity itself is now scarce. So what happens when we bring an ancient brain to a modern world of abundance? Well, let’s see…

1) You open the Amazon app to look for a pair of sneakers. 2) You scroll through dozens of pics of sneakers of all colors, sizes, prices. Maybe this one, not that one… bingo! 3) You buy with a click, and it’s off to the next clothing item.

Or…

1) You open Instagram, 2) You look at the first post, skip it. The next post, meh. The next post… Aha! Cute and hilarious puppies. 3) You begin scrolling again.

Or…

1) You click on your favorite news website. 2) You read the first headline, which is either interesting or not, and keeping skimming until one catches your eye. You read the story. 3) You go back to skimming again.

Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. In our tech-infused era, this ancient pathway has been turbocharged. We have more opportunities than ever, the rewards are just the right level of unpredictable, and repeatability is as quick as fiber-optic internet.

what happens in vegas…

So how did we get here? It wasn’t by accident. Easter shows how, back in the 1980s, slot machines entered the computer age and got “smart” about leveraging the scarcity loop in order to hook gamblers into spending more time (and, of course, more money) with the one-armed bandit. 40 years later, “We now spend more money on slot machines than we do on movies, books, and music combined.”

Yikes.

To explore this phenomenon, Easter visits the Center for Gaming Innovation, part of the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. You heard that right. UNLV has an entire lab whose mission is to “create innovative and commercially viable casino games.” You may be familiar with the practice by universities of naming their various Centers and Institutes after the wealthy alumni and benefactors who donate gobs of money. There at UNLV, you’ll find the “DraftKings Gaming Innovation Studio.” Hey - you gotta respect their honesty.

Researchers at the Center fine-tune slot machines and other games to figure out the exact levels of rewards, and the exact timing of those rewards, that will light our neural circuits on fire and keep us hooked for as long as possible. It sounds downright diabolical.

But as Easter explains, this research doesn’t stay in Vegas. Everything from friendship (social media), to romantic interest (dating apps), to investing (Robinhood), to shopping (Amazon), to walking (Pokemon GO) has been touched by the act/reward/repeat scarcity loop. In the tech world, they call it gameification, and it’s driving us to spend more and more time hooked to our phones and devices.

Even worse, we are particularly susceptible to entering the loop when we’re experiencing some sort of duress, whether through boredom, stress, anxiety, or any other negative mental state. This explains why all of these gameified systems saw huge gains during the pandemic — and why people are less satified than ever.

food & scarcity

One of the more fascinating episodes is a chapter called simply “Food,” in which Easter ventures deep into the rainforests of Bolivia to meet members of the Tsimane, a tribe of people who still live a traditional lifestyle and who are remarkable for not having any trace of heart disease.

What do they eat, Easter asks, that makes them so healthy? Are they vegetarian? Vegan? Carnivore? Paleo? Keto? None of the above. The Tsimane diet consists of “Rice, plantains, tubers and corn; meat and fish that they themselves hunt and pull from streams; fruit; and the occasional wild nuts.” They even grow their own sugarcane and enjoy sweets once in a while.

But what’s notable, Easter says, is that their food is, on the whole, quite bland. Meals consist of a couple of one-ingredient foods without spices, sauces, or other flavor enhancers. They eat well, but they never overeat.

Our modern, ultra-processed food, meanwhile, is designed by scientists to hit all the pleasure centers in our brain, lighting them up just like that slot machine. If we want to get healthy, we need to break free of the scarcity loop of modern food and embrace whole, one-ingredient foods that we cook ourselves.

I ripped through Scarcity Brain in just a couple of days. Easter deftly combines journalism with behavioral science to create an insightful book that’s a very fun read. In the end, he says, the first step in breaking free from the scarcity loop is just become aware of it. Mission accomplished — in the week since putting it down, I’ve seen the loop at work everywhere I look. It’s something that can’t be unseen. I highly recommend checking it out!