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Comment by siavosh | Hacker News Reader

Request - any books/articles anyone can recommend on the human mind's instinctive need to become obsessed with something? Periodically, like many others, my mind becomes obsessed with something and I need to learn/build until it ceases to be interesting which can range from days to years. Like hoarding, I think there's probably an evolutionary drive in this, but curious if there are good resources to better understand the different attributes of wanting to learn/do something to 'irrational' levels of details whether it's something seemingly inconsequential or consequential, which seems irrelevant to this human drive. So much joy has come out of these periods of obsessions, I'm curious to better understand it's source.

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I don’t think it explains much in a scientific sense, but with the theme of passion and obsession, I really enjoyed The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orchid_Thief

And this famous quote from that book:

> “The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility."

Edit: before the book was the New Yorker article, if you want to “try before you buy” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/01/23/orchid-fever

Thanks for the interesting reference. The drive to reduce uncertainty could certainly be a hypothesis in explaining animal curiosity and its persistence through natural selection for a population.

I guess I'm more intrigued by the individual phenomena of obsession. The psychological aspects of my occasional obsessions are so vivid to me still. Years back when I got into woodworking, for example, I remember just visualizing as I fell asleep the use of hand planes and the pursuit of getting thinner and thinner shavings. Then I got into bread baking and I pursued everything I could for the ultimate oven spring, I would then start visualizing the reveal of the bread out of the oven. Then I got into mechanical watches (thankfully briefly) and couldn't stop reading about them, and relevant imagery kept popping into my head, etc etc etc.

My world, priorities, value systems all just made sense in those periods which spanned months to years. Then inevitably when I moved on, I would look back and I couldn't relate or understand the obsession anymore. I'd transition from an insider to an outsider looking at it. It always surprises me how that transition, into and out of, an obsession alienates you from yourself.

This is beautiful.

I suggest Outside Lies Magic, by John Stilgoe. Short read, well-written.

Cool book. He basically reintroduces us to the world around us, and we never look at it quite the same, afterwards; always wondering what the "story" is behind something that catches our attention.

Part of what makes it interesting, is wondering what goes through the author's head.

Can turn a walk around the block into an obsessive adventure.

It won't explain anything, but it may help us to connect with our own sense of wonder.

https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=1995

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Outside_Lies_Magic/oOjQ...

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Madman-Insanity-English-Dic...

Possibly related to our naturally-selected drive that underpins Persistence Hunting[0]? Doesn’t speak to the “irrational” prong of your question, but more along the lines of “past any/all expectation.”

And no idea if anyone has already studied this. I had the thought about this possible connection a few nights ago, funny timing.

(The prevalence of Persistence Hunting in human evolution is still an open debate I believe)

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

Not a book or article, but Adam Savage's TED talk comes to mind. I can't remember if he touches on the same topics in his book, but he often refers to it as the creative obsessive.

https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_savage_my_obsession_with_obje...

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