Outline of a hypothesis about the lost-in-thought state

What causes unhappiness?

Observation 1: Most of the thoughts that occur in the lost-in-thought state (LITS) are simulations.  We relive past experiences, with and without imaginary changes, and imagine possible future experiences.  

Conjecture 1:  LITS  originated in early animals as a planning or decision-making system.  The brain would consider possible actions, imagine the consequences of each one  — in other words, simulate the experiences that would follow  — and pick the best according to criteria which I'll discuss in Conjecture 2.

Observation 2:  Although we are unconscious in LITS in the sense that we don't know what we're thinking or that we're thinking, the thoughts generate emotions and feelings.   Examples:  when we worry about bad things that may happen, we feel fear.  When we fantasize about sex, we become aroused.

Conjecture 2:  The early LITS system used intensity of feeling as the criterion for selecting the best possible action.  I gave an example (weighing fear against thirst) in an earlier article. 

Conjecture 3:  The basic elements of the conjectured original LITS system remain in place today in humans.  When we are in LITS, we are usually simulating scenarios (daydreaming) and as a result, stimulating ourselves affectively.

Observation 3:  Most people spend most of their waking hours in LITS.  It is incredibly hard to stop doing this for even a short time.  We know this because all of the Asian soteriological traditions and some forms of psychotherapy place heavy emphasize on techniques that aim at stopping it.  Hundreds of millions of people have practiced these techniques and know firsthand how hard it is. Almost no one succeeds in permanently stopping the tendency to lapse into LITS.

Conjecture 4:  There are two reasons why it’s so difficult to stop LITS.  The reasons are of different kinds:  (a) LITS enables people to stimulate themselves affectively; the stimulation is a motivator.  (b) Natural selection designed the brain this way; LITS is our natural state.  

Observation 4:  The idea  in Conjecture 4 that stimulation is a motivator brings to mind the famous Olds and Milner (1954) experiment in which rats wouldn't stop pressing a lever that caused electrodes in their brains to stimulate their pleasure centers.  Rats chose to die of thirst rather than stop pressing the lever to drink.

Discussion 1:  The fact that the rats responded to the feeling of the reward stimulus  rather than thirst may lend support to my suggestion (Conjecture 2 and this earlier article) that the LITS system uses intensity of feeling as a criterion for choosing actions.

Observation 4:  Humans in LITS may remind us of the rats but there are several big differences.  Humans sometimes stimulate themselves in a pleasurable way, like the rats, but they also sometimes stimulate themselves with thoughts that cause unpleasant feelings like  fear, anger, sorrow, loss, depression, self-hatred, etc.

Discussion 2:  It may seem puzzling that natural selection has designed our brains in such a way that we can become addicted to thinking thoughts that make us feel bad.  But (a) natural selection doesn’t care about our feelings unless they affect fitness, and (b) to some extent, LITS in humans may be a maladaptation like impacted wisdom teeth that results from recent rapid increases in intelligence and brain size.

Discussion 3: The fact that people become unconscious in a certain way while in LITS may be a valuable clue toward a science of consciousness; it may have a functional explanation.

Discussion 4:  The fact that thoughts in LITS often make people feel bad may be the main source of human unhappiness.