Why do things?

Yes this is slightly existential. It's something I'm thinking about more as I get specific on what I want to do and how I'm going to do it. It's also written like generative philosophy, as I wrangle with the question.

In my initial thoughts, I arrived at the conclusion that we do things to feel. Our bodies are built to process information, feel things, and because of what we feel, do things. But that frames it as reactive. We also act proactively: pursuing a feeling, avoiding one, or chasing a remembered feeling. Either way, I think the answer is the same: we do things to feel.

Demis Hassabis, the founder/CEO of Google's AI division, Deepmind, has recently stated he's beginning to consider "information being the most fundamental unit… not energy, not matter, but information." ¹ This belief is downstream of the concept that organisms are information processors. Since elementary school we've known this to be true - we've got our five senses! And the deeper we look we can understand the human body as a complex system that's optimized to process everything going on in our environments - integrating sensory information and constantly updating predictions - to take the next (most likely subconscious) action. And so the things that we do are a constant loop of action <-> information. Information is the raw unit; feeling is the qualitative human interpretation of it. What our bodies process, we experience as feelings. So in this human loop, information becomes feelings. And they are so powerful.

The most powerful products are the ones that make us feel something. If we define power as the ability to change behavior and make us compelled to do things, that is. As consumers, we can use two products with the same technologies that output the same things, but the one that makes us feel is the one that sticks. You know the iPod because it made you feel cool but you've never heard of the Diamond Rio even though it came out 3 years before. Even products that fail can be powerful. The Friend AI pendant made people furious - they destroyed ads, held protests. It will likely fail because of timing, but the feeling it created made it impossible to ignore. We remember the way products, people, and ideas that make us feel.

Disclaimer: This question (in the way it's being asked) isn't for everyone. If you're fighting to survive, the answer is obvious - you do things to stay alive. This question is being considered from a place of privilege. The more accurate question is: Why do things when you don't have to?

When I think back on the things that I have done in my life that I didn't need to, and then question why I did them, I don't immediately think that I did them because I wanted to feel a certain way. And I think that's probably because we don't think of it in that way (the loop of feeling to action) and a lot of the motivation is hard to stay consciously in touch with. But this is also where I think the argument, that the reason why we do things is to feel, breaks down. Why would you want to do something that doesn't feel good, especially in the moment? Like doing a hard physical activity, learning a new skill, or working through a relationship. Actually, instead of being disproven, maybe it's difficult to understand because it's too fundamental, and the more practical way of framing it is: we do things to find out. Finding out is how we feel.

I'll always remember the first race when I broke 3 hours in the marathon because of how it made me feel. It made me feel alive. The pain during that race made me feel alive. I just remember thinking that over and over. "I'm alive". It was a neat thought because it was a blessing and a reminder. The pain was a blessing because it wasn't felt for reasons out of my control. And it was a reminder that I was alive and was damn lucky enough to live a life where I can feel life on a wide range of emotions. The build up of all the feelings of uncertainty, frustration, and hard-fought self-belief, also made me feel alive. But all throughout the months spent training and the race itself, I didn't think I was pursuing a feeling. I was trying to find out. (again: see disclaimer - this is a privileged example)

We work hard on things that our system one doesn't want to do and our system two² feels uncomfortable doing because we want to find out - there's a novel feeling out there.

Not everything needs to be found out, and heck there's certainly wonder and beauty in the unknown and wondering what it could be (are we alone in the universe? not knowing is generative in ideas, work, and fun theories) - but even that act, wondering, is the mind wandering on all the possibilities of finding out. We're innately curious people, albeit curiosity being on a scale like most things. 'What could be' very quickly turns into finding out.

There's so many things we can wonder about - it makes whatever we find out that much more meaningful. It makes every revelation special. No matter how many you have, a revelation is scarce in a universe of infinite possibilities. Scarce = Valuable. Maybe I've just progressed to argue for the importance of constantly learning now, but so many others would argue the same. I don't think it's uncommon to believe learning is important. Maybe whats uncommon is how important it is exactly. And possibly even more uncommon is the understanding that we're simply doing things to find out and that will never end. Novelty is exciting.

I believe humans will never be bored, truly. We can artificially be bored - there's things we've created that will hijack our excitement, but even the hijacking has its diminishing returns and we consciously feel the curve flattening. Humans do things to find out. And humans find out to feel... life.

Footnotes

1. "The Future of Intelligence with Demis Hassabis" (published Dec 16, 2025) ↩

2. Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman ↩