Research consistently shows that while people may initially regret poor decisions, in the long run they regret the decisions they didn't make — inaction — far more than the ones they took.
Where this was said
At 2:33:53 · chapter starts 2:28:28
Mark came to Kierkegaard late — after Subtle Art was published — through a philosophy book club in New York. He started Fear and Trembling expecting tedious biblical commentary and emerged converted. [1] — Mark Manson "The ethical stage is rational commitment — you can explain your choices. The religious stage is when your commitment exceeds rational justi…" 3:10:33 The Abraham and Isaac story in Kierkegaard's telling is not about obedience to an insecure God. It's a meditation on the 'virtue of the absurd' — Abraham's willingness to do something utterly irrational and unexplainable to anyone else as a test of the deepest possible commitment. Kierkegaard chose the religious stage's name because only religious language captures what this level of commitment feels like from the inside: it requires a leap of faith, and it involves what he called 'infinite resignation' — the acceptance that it may fail completely, and choosing to do it anyway. The ethical stage is rational commitment, still subject to cost-benefit scrutiny. The religious stage is when commitment merges with identity so completely that it no longer registers as a choice. It just feels like who you are.
The psychological immune system can get you through the first few months of any commitment. But durable, long-term well-being requires self-concordance — choosing commitments that are genuinely aligned with your values and what you actually want. Without that alignment, the satisfaction fades fast.
Every major commitment kills a version of yourself that will never exist. The 25-year-old nomad, the musician, the person who could have gone a different way — those selves die when you choose. Nobody markets change as grief, but that grief is real, and skipping it is why so many people avoid committing. If the grief is genuine, it means you chose something real.
The music conservatory Mark Manson attended had a dropout rate of approximately 87–90%, illustrating how few people reach the 'religious' stage of commitment to a creative calling.
The ethical stage is rational commitment — you can explain your choices. The religious stage is when your commitment exceeds rational justification. You can't explain why. It just feels like it chose you. Kierkegaard called this the 'virtue of the absurd' — and it's represented not just in faith but in the entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes who can't imagine doing anything else.
Steven Pressfield's insight: don't wait for the commitment to feel real before acting like a professional. Set up the studio. Make the schedule. Show up. Commitment doesn't precede action — it follows it. You act like a pro first, and your brain catches up with justifications after. The action is the commitment.
Dan Gilbert's research found that the psychological immune system — the brain's ability to justify and find satisfaction in choices — activates most powerfully when a decision is perceived as irreversible.
Barry Schwartz's research found that maximizers — people who try to optimize every decision — tend to achieve objectively better outcomes but report lower happiness than satisficers who choose 'good enough.'
A study showed that men in committed relationships who briefly viewed 10 attractive women's faces reported a measurable decrease in relationship satisfaction immediately afterward, illustrating evolutionary mismatch with modern media.
Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, who previously didn't believe in marriage, immediately proposed to his long-term girlfriend after his own research showed that constraints increase satisfaction with choices.
Animals first sensed light 540 million years ago, triggering an evolutionary acceleration known as the Cambrian explosion within 10 million years.
It is estimated that half of all cortical activity in the human brain is involved in visual function, underscoring vision's central role in intelligence.
Cognitive neuroscience literature shows that by age 6, humans can recognize tens of thousands of different object categories — far more data than early AI systems were trained on.
Only about 3% of FDA-approved drugs have genuinely unclear mechanisms of action, making an unknown mechanism a meaningful early red flag for any compound.
Even compounds that clear preclinical testing often fail in humans: 30 to 50% of drugs entering phase 1 trials do not advance to phase 2, frequently because human behavior differs from animal models.
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