What's Nicky Learning? "A Very Tentative Theory of Being Human" (Patreon)

Published:

2020-06-02 12:01:07

Imported:

2026-06

Content

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. . .

(reading time: 22 min)
(Patreon-exclusive for 48 hours [until Thursday], if you wanna share it later!)

Welcome to the monthly What's Nicky Learning? post! I forgot to do these posts for the past few months, but since Nicky was learning mostly epidemiology for some reason, consider my & Marcel's COVID-19 interactive a replacement.

Speaking of which: welcome to you 100(!) new Patrons who found me through the new interactive! 💖As always, but especially during an economic downturn, I'm super grateful for you keeping me financially afloat, gifting me the opportunity to do stuff like explain epidemiology with 😐faces.

That project shared the technical things I learnt. Today, I want to share the personal things I'm still learning.

If you've felt stuck, stagnant, or struggling in these pandemic-times, I hope this post helps! This may all come off as petty Zeroth World Problems, but quarantine's a good time for navel-gazing. So, here we go:

“Needs, Habits, and A Very Very Very Tentative Theory of Being Human”

We're all trying to make sense of this, aren't we?

Not just: "Why did this get so out of control?" and "Why did almost all our institutions fail us?"

But also: "What am I supposed to do now?" and "How does my life make sense in a world that doesn't?"

I tried to work out those questions while making our COVID-19 interactive. If you're wondering what the creative process looks like, here's me from 2 weeks before launching the project:

“FUCK this project.”

“Nobody needs this shit. I don't need this shit. I'm obviously making a COVID-19 thing out of FOMO [Fear Of Missing Out] and distracting myself from loneliness. I'm sick of making the same hyper-polished edu-tainment bullshit I've been doing for 6 years. And how the hell is understanding the SEIR model supposed to help anyone, even emotionally, at this point?”

“I'm not doing this project out of a sense of contribution or creativity. I'm doing this out of fucking HABIT. I'm being a GODDAMN ROBOT.”

“Well FUCK. ALL. THAT.”

Then I deleted a month of work, and emptied the trash – with no backup.

. . .

Before you ask: I'm glad I made the project in the end, and I'm fine now, thanks for your concern. <3 I separated the signal from the noise in my emotions, and the signals are being processed. Me writing this post is the processing.

I've had a long history of anxiety disorder – I even made a game and two longform essays about it – but the above didn't feel like an anxiety attack. It felt noble.

Why? Because I felt "humans being robots" was the reason we didn't stop the pandemic in February:

Western public health orgs not changing because they didn't want to cause "mass panic" in the public.
The public not changing because "it's just a flu" according to a pundit on the news.
The news not changing, sticking to its habit of giving airtime to truth & lies, so the public can't tell where the truth lies.

Hell, why didn't I raise alarms about COVID-19 earlier? And when I did, why did I parrot the message from Western public health orgs of "don't wear masks"? I was angry at myself – and much of the world – for acting like robots. Acting out of habit. Not changing. Even modern AI robots are capable of change.

They call it "autopilot"...

...but the real-life autopilot in planes actually saves lives.

"Acting out of habit" may have cost lives, but it saved lives too – many East Asian countries already had a good habit of wearing masks in public. (As for me rage-deleting my project, turns out I already had a good habit of backing up my work, without my remembering. Hah.)

So there's the paradox. Habits = Inertia. A thing at rest/in motion tends to stay at rest/in motion. Inertia stops you from changing, but it also keeps you on course. And habits that are good in one scenario (e.g. "Trust The Experts") can be horrible in new scenarios (e.g. Almost every "expert" public health organization in the West failing simultaneously. Though, kudos to Taiwan, South Korea, Iceland, New Zealand, and some individual epidemiologists.)

How then – as individuals and institutions – do we use the fuel of habits without being burned by it?

It's easy: we need a habit of updating our habits.

And by "easy" I mean "nightmare piss-zone hard".

. . .

The Philosophy of Thermostats

Before we talk about the "why" & "how" of humans regulating themselves, let's talk about control theory – the theory of machines regulating themselves.

Consider the humble thermostat. A thermostat:

has a goal temperature
can sense the current temperature
can detect the difference to create a signal
uses that signal to act, and turn a heater on or off...
...which in turn, changes the current temperature! A feedback loop:

As for machines, same for all living things (called "homeostasis" or "allostasis"). Your body has a "goal" temperature & can sense its current temperature, signals the difference to your autonomic nervous system, which makes you shiver or sweat, to regulate your body temperature.

As for physical needs, same for psychological needs. We humans:

have physical & psychological needs (goal)
can sense experiences (current state)
will feel emotions if our needs are/aren't met (signals)
use emotions to learn new behavior/habits... (action)
...which in turn, changes our experiences! (feedback loop)

In a picture: (don't worry if this diagram doesn't make 100% sense – will explain all soon!)

(Applying control theory to psychology isn't my invention. It was already done in the '60s. All I'm doing is trying to connect it with newer theories, mental health stuff, and my own experiences.)

Let's break it down, step by step. The following is mix of pop-science & personal conjecture. Please take it with a shaker of salt:

Needs

Just like how the Standard Model lists fundamental particles, which create atoms, which create molecules, which create everything we see... a "Theory of Being Human" should list fundamental needs, which create emotions, which create habits, which create everything we do.

You may have heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Alas, it's fallen out of favor with psychologists, because there's no empirical evidence of an actual hierarchy – the claim you can't fulfil your "higher" needs until you've fulfilled your "lower" needs. (One of many counter-examples: Gandhi going on a hunger strike for the greater good.)

Another theory that's more empirically backed – replicated by independent researchers, with experimental & observational evidence, in WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures – is Deci & Ryan's Self-Determination Theory [pdf]. The theory states that, besides our physical needs, evolution's also given us 3 main psychological needs. (with no hierarchy)

The 3 needs even have a nice acronym – "ARC":

Autonomy (or Authenticity): You choose your life, according to what you value, with fully informed consent. You're not forced by others, your inner demons, or bad habits. You know thyself. ("Autonomy" is NOT individualism, and it's NOT Western culture-specific. It's similar to Internal Locus of Control)
Relatedness: You care about others, others care about you. Your social world is mostly just and fair. You contribute to the physical/psychological needs of people outside yourself. ("Relatedness" is similar to Belongingness & Self-Transcendence)
Competence (or Challenge): You push your capacities to the fullest, and grow them even further. You do good work, try new things, experience art, understand, learn, and play. ("Competence" is similar to Self-Actualization, Flow, & Arete)

I don't know if anyone's explicitly made the link before, but I find Self-Determination Theory maps nicely to "the three sources of meaning" according to Holocaust survivor & psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl: 1) Love (Relatedness), 2) Work (Competence), and 3) Choosing your attitude in the face of immense suffering. (Autonomy)

In a picture:

(Can you tell I love loops?)

We evolved to crave food, water & sleep because we're animals. We evolved to crave Competence because we used to live in complex environments (and still do), to crave Relatedness because our survival used to depend on others (and still does), and to crave Autonomy so that our other cravings don't let others manipulate us.

Unlike our bottomless pit of desires for extrinsic rewards like fame, needs can actually be satisfied. You don't need an ever-increasing amount of food and water. You don't need an ever-increasing amount of high-quality friendships. An extrinsic reward like fame is bottomless because it tastes like Relatedness, but doesn't actually give you Relatedness. It's artificial sweetener, exploiting our evolution in an unhealthy way.

So, in healthy cases, how does evolution help us protect our needs?

Answer: with feeling!

Needs → Emotions

You have a physical need for food. When it's not met, you feel a "negative" signal: hunger. When it's met, you feel a "positive" signal: fullness. Your feelings tell you what physical needs are fulfilled or at risk.

You have psychological needs for Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence. When they're not met, you get "negative" feelings of:

Autonomy: feeling "used"
Relatedness: rejection, shame, betrayal
Competence: boredom, confusion, uselessness

When they are met, you get "positive" feelings of:

Autonomy: feeling authentic
Relatedness: camaraderie, gratitude, love
Competence: curiosity, epiphany, accomplishment

Note: Our ability to feel "negative" feelings is good. And not in a "sadness exists to make happiness happier" way. (That's like saying brakes exist to make the gas pedal faster)

No, "negative" feelings are good because they alert you to something bad. A need at risk. They're like smoke alarms – sure they're annoying, and they have high false positives – but in the long run, they could save your life.

(This is a functionalist account of emotions. Also see: the Smoke Detector Principle [pdf], which explains why anxiety having high false positives is not a bug, but a feature!Related: People who can't feel pain usually die young.)

Sorry I keep hammering on about this nail, but this realization helped my mental health more than every therapy I've taken, combined:

🚨FEELINGS ARE NOISY SIGNALS ABOUT MET & UNMET NEEDS. 🚨

(In control theory, "noisy" means "imperfect", not "loud".)

I think a lot of our struggles in mental health, relationships, and even political polarization come from this: most people have a bad theory of emotions.

For example:

"Negative feelings are irrational". No, there's signal in the noise.

"Feelings are always valid". No, there's noise in the signal. (Also, when my feelings are saying everyone hates me, saying my feelings are valid is not helpful, thank you very much. Noise: everyone hates me, Signal: my Relatedness needs are unmet)

"You should mindfully, Stoically, let go of your negative feelings". No, let go of the noise. Negative feelings like anger over human rights violations have important signals, that can better humanity, if properly processed.

"Be authentic, just act on your feelings!" If properly processed. Real authenticity (Autonomy) comes from acting on signal, not noise. Being a better thinker makes you a better feeler.

"Feelings get in the way of rationality." Even pure mathematicians will tell you their job involves emotion: questions motivated by curiosity, proofs judged by beauty, answers consolidated with epiphany. (See my post on emotion+learning for more papers about this) Being a better feeler makes you a better thinker.

"We should maximize feelings of happiness/meaningfulness." A restaurant can maximize 5-star reviews by paying bots, and you can maximize "happiness" with drugs and "meaningfulness" with conspiracy theories. The pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of a proxy metric. Feelings are noisy signals for the needs, they're NOT the needs themselves. Beware Goodhart's Law: if you try to maximize a noisy signal for X, you'll probably maximize noise, not X. Artificial sweeteners.

Actually, since I brought up "meaningfulness", let's go MAXIMUM PRETENTIOUSNESS:

The Meaning of Life™

You've probably felt – especially if, like me, you have a history of depression/anxiety – the king of negative signals: "my life feels meaningless".

The problem is "meaningless" is meaningless.

Specifically, it's not specific enough. Imagine if we didn't have the words for "hungry" or "tired", and we only had the word "pain". You haven't eaten in days, so you tell a friend, "my life feels painful". Your friend tells you their epiphany: their life felt painful too, but then they slept more, and the pain went away! You try sleeping. Pain's still there. Guess there's something deeply wrong with you.

Same with "meaningless". It tells you at least one of your psychological needs is unmet, but doesn't tell you which ones. Are you hiding a core part of yourself to avoid shame? (Autonomy threat) Do you have people who care for you, but you feel like you're just a burden to them? (Relatedness threat) Have you been incoherently drifting in life, or the opposite, too-coherently stuck in life? (Competence threat)

Once you can tell apart the specific signals, you can take specific action. You can better fulfil your ARC needs – literally, a more fulfilling life.

. . .

Well that was a detour. What can we actually do with feeling-signals? How's all this lead to habits?

How does emotion become motion?

Needs → Emotions → Habits

We've all got an autopilot. Here's its source code:

Habit = “When you need X, and are in situation Y, then do action Z”.

Habit STRENGTHENED if:
Doing action Z in situation Y near-immediately meets need X,
creating a "positive" feeling.

Habit WEAKENED if:
Doing action Z in situation Y near-immediately *hurts* need X,
creating a "negative" feeling.

(This is slightly different from how habits are usually described: "When [Situation], Then [Action]", with no mention of needs. I used to think this too! But I now believe your internal situation (met/unmet needs) is as important as your external situation. Besides, we need "needs" to explain why things are rewards or punishments. Food stops being a reward to a rat when it's already full.)

A program that reprograms itself – pretty clever, evolution! There's just one glitch:

Habits only change when the need is met or hurt near-immediately.

Good habits are hard to make, because they temporarily threaten a need, hence an immediate "negative" feeling. (e.g. Hard to sleep on time, because that means logging off the Relatedness artificial sweetener of social media.)

Bad habits are hard to break, because they temporarily fulfil a need, hence an immediate "positive" feeling. (e.g. We haven't seen our friends for months. Can you blame a starving person for chugging down artificial sweetener?)

(This also applies to cognitive habits, not just behavioral. A good cognitive habit, like finding flaws in your own beliefs, is temporarily unpleasant. A bad cognitive habit, like assuming people who disagree with you are evil or stupid, is temporarily satisfying. Again: being a better feeler/thinker makes you a better thinker/feeler.)

I think lots of us in lockdown are beating ourselves up coz we didn't make a habit of deadlifting Great Literature while learning French. Didn't Newton write King Lear during quarantine or some shit?

I find it's easier to be kinder on yourself, if you remember that your habits & feelings – especially the "bad" ones – are trying to protect your evolution-hardwired needs.

Thinking needs-first also helps you debug your autopilot, and change your habits!

Three main methods:

1) Replace a bad habit, with another way to fulfil the same need. For example: if it's a hunger for Relatedness that keeps us on social media until 2am, one could replace it with something more "nutritious", like video chat while cooking dinner together.

2) Form a good habit, by making it immediately needs-satisfying. You can use small wins [pdf] for a quick hit of Competence. Personally, I do the Don't Break The Chain method: draw a circle on a calendar for each day I do a habit, and try to make the chain as long as I can.

3) Break a bad habit, by making it immediately needs-threatening. Or if not threatening to do, at least annoying to do. Hardcore example: apps like Beeminder will take away your money if you – say – cheat on your exercise.

(I know I started this post talking about COVID-19 institutional failure, and urged that institutions change their habits... but honestly I've no idea how. I'm barely able to change my own habits. But maybe the psychology of habits is still helpful for this pandemic? For example, the mask-wearing habit feels immediately unpleasant, so how can we offset that? Autonomy: fashionable cloth masks for self-expression? Relatedness: a Stars & Stripes face mask for USA patriots?)

But remember: the way to use the fuel of habits without being burned by them is...

The Habit of Updating Your Habits

The goal is human fulfilment.

Not the feeling-signal of fulfilment, actual fulfilment – which comes from meeting your fundamental human needs.

So, here's the meta-habit:

WHEN:

you have a calm moment to sit & reflect

THEN:

0) If you want to make a new habit, go to Step 1. If you want to break an old habit, go to Step 2.

1) To make a new habit, ask yourself: How can I make it immediately needs-satisfying? Is there a bad habit that's blocking me from making this new habit? (If so, break it, go to Step 2.)

2) To break an old habit, ask yourself: What needs does this bad habit satisfy, even if temporarily? Can I think of a replacement habit, to satisfy the same needs without the long-term harm? (If so, make it, go to Step 1.) Worst-case, how can I make the bad habit immediately needs-threatening, or annoying?

3) From Step 1 or 2, write down one small specific action you can do today.

4) Do it!

. . .

You know what, you probably have a calm moment to sit & reflect right now.

Take 2 minutes, and go through the above exercise. I'll do the same! Scroll down when you're done.

. . .

Okay, I did the exercise for myself.

The bad habit I want to break is... my entire work-life system? At the beginning of this post, here's how I yelled my Zeroth World Problems at myself:

I'm obviously making a COVID-19 thing out of FOMO [Fear Of Missing Out] and distracting myself from loneliness. I'm sick of making the same hyper-polished edu-tainment bullshit I've been doing for 6 years. And how the hell is understanding the SEIR model supposed to help anyone, even emotionally, at this point?

(Obviously, I convinced myself to make the project in the end. What made it more needs-fulfilling was 1) Relatedness: the "channel your fear" frame felt emotionally helpful. 2) Competence: the "waning immunity" simulations were novel to me, and 3) Physical Needs: I hate admitting that I sometimes "make art for the money", but it is an economic downturn, and I did want more financial stability via Patreon. Thank you for that 💖)

Anyway, breaking down my emotional breakdown, here were my unmet needs:

Autonomy ("doing it out of FOMO")
Relatedness ("distracting myself from loneliness")
Competence ("making the same bullshit for 6 years")
Relatedness ("how is this helping anyone?")

So: "What needs does this bad habit satisfy, even if temporarily?"

Physical (you, dear reader, are paying my rent & food!)
Autonomy (working alone, I get full creative independence)
Relatedness (there's a community around "explorable explanations")
Competence (I use my uncommon combo of code-art-design-writing skills)

Then: "Can I think of a replacement habit, to satisfy the same needs without the long-term harm?"

Maybe? Brainstorming while I type:

Problem: "Doing this out of FOMO", "Making the same bullshit".
Solution? Promise that – from now on – my projects will not always be interactive, or even educational. This lets me explore more, and expand my skills. And when I do make another educational thing, here's how I go beyond my "hyper-polished edu-tainment bullshit":

My next educational thing must use some form of "practice". Not just fiddling with sliders on a simulation – actual practice.

One of the most replicated results from cognitive psychology (which is already the most replicatable sub-field of psychology, though that's not saying much) is that you need practice for long-term learning. Even a "passive" medium like text allows for practice – you just did the above exercise!

"Practice" could be spaced repetition, metacognitive prompts, faded worked examples, etc. I'm ashamed that I've known this fact for years – hell I even made an interactive on spaced repetition – but I've never added real "practice problems" in my educational work. I must correct this.
Problem: "My loneliness", "working alone".

Solution? Obviously I can't do much during quarantine, but afterwards... Collaborations? Co-working with friends?

Though maybe that's like trying to combine the kitchen with the bedroom. Probably healthiest if I just set hard limits on hours/days I can work or check email. I know that sounds obvious, but if you've ever done independent work, you know that the hyphen in "work-life" often just blurs away.
Problem: "How is this helping anyone?"

(Specifically: I have no way to measure the long-term impact of my educational work. Even if I gave tests like schools do, we all know you can ace a test & remember jack shit one month later. And other proxy metrics – views, retweets, Patreon dollars – are all exploitable via Goodhart's Law. Qualitative comments & fan-mails are better, but if self-reports on what impacted your life really were accurate, we wouldn't have therapists now would we?)

Solution? Either:

1) Stop caring about being "helpful". Like poetry or pure mathematics. I can still happen to be helpful – modern computer science has its roots in two guys who spent 1000 pages trying to prove 1 + 1 = 2 and failed – but being helpful is not the point.

And/Or...

2) Make stuff that's helpful for me. This way I'm "dogfooding my own product", with "skin in the game". That's why I'm writing this post. It's also why I made Adventures With Anxiety, and why I was making the trans voice training tool. (which I put aside to do COVID-19 stuff, but I'll get back to it!)

Next, Step 3: “Write down one small specific action you can do today.”

I'll cheat a bit, and write three:

Promise to you – yes, you! 💖 – that my future work will not necessarily be interactive, educational, or intentionally "helpful" to others. Could be comics, videogames, short stories, plushie patterns, tools, toys, or longform essays like this. The only constant is that they'll all be 1) Free, 2) Open source, and 3) Something that's helpful to myself, or was simply fun to make.

Also I maaay try making NSFW art this year, but if I do, it'll be a different Patreon. So you're not funding my kinks if you don't want to.
The next time I make a new educational thing – "passive" medium or not – it must have some form of practice. Frick, it's the most basic application of two decades of cognitive psychology.
Hard limits: NEVER work or check email on Fridays / Saturdays, or on other days after 4:30pm. Those times are reserved for play, love, and exploring. Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence.

Finally, Step 4:

"Do it."

Well, I just did the first one. I told you! So now you know.

As for the second one, this post has one practice exercise for you.

And for the third one, it's 12:30pm as I write this, so I'll close this writing app in 4 hours, and go for a masked walk in the park. [Update 6:00pm – ok NOW I'll go for a masked walk in the park.

Emotion processing is signal processing.

I wrote this post because I wanted to work through my own problems, and shared it in case it's helpful to any of you working through your own problems.

Hopefully this thread from personal burnout, to institutional failure, to control theory, to human needs, to emotional regulation, to habit advice – and I think I rambled on the meaning of life somewhere? – I hope that wasn't too much of a random rollercoaster.

Honestly, I feel guilty writing this essay, coz it sounds so... petty? Nurses are working 25-hour-a-day shifts, with faces scarred from their protective gear (if they're lucky enough to have some), and here I am bitching about my petty post-modern problems.

Then again, the whole reason why hospitals are fighting so hard – and why the rest of us are doing our part to free the hospitals – is so that, soon, we can all go back to our tiny beautiful lives, and bitch about our petty post-modern problems.

Well, glad I can contribute.

<3,
~ Nicky Case

. . .

P.S:

Give me "positive" & "negative" signals on this post! (remember "negative" isn't bad) I want to post the Theory of Being Human as its own standalone essay sometime.

Positive signals: What parts did you find valuable? How's it connect to your own life?

Negative signals: What parts don't fit your experiences? What nuances, counter-arguments, and alternative theories did I totally miss?

Here's the summary picture again! Spacing out this repetition:

P.S x2: Still doing femme voice practice! Here's my latest attempt.

Let me honestly know how "natural feminine" my voice sounds, on a scale of 0% to 100%, thanks! I'm still planning to finish the trans voice tool eventually, but if you're looking to feminize your voice in the meantime, check out Zheanna's recent tutorial! (& the rest of her videos)