The Art of Exploration is a Lifelong Pursuit

Our world is too dynamic to ever stop exploring.

In episode 1,062 of The Art of Manliness, The Art of Exploration — Why We Seek New Challenges and Search Out the Unknown, Brett McKay interviews Alex Hutchinson, author of The Explorer’s Gene.

They touch on the explore-exploit problem: when do you stop exploring new things and double down on what you know works?

I won’t get into the explore-exploit details, check out Alex’s book and Algorithms To Live By for a deep dive on the topic. In short, the rational solution would be to progressively explore less and exploit more. The older we get, the less we should explore.

But while the math does not lie, there’s something uncomfortable with the idea of stopping to explore, isn’t there? Does being rational mean giving up on novelty and settle for eating the same meal at the same restaurant, listening to the same album, and re-watching the same movie?

Brett and Alex both agree that there must be more to it than the raw math, and offer two reasons for why one ought to keep exploring.

The first is that as our life expectancy increases, we can explore for many more years than our ancestors. I don’t like this explanation because it simply pushes the problem later in the future. That we can explore in our sixties does not address what to do in our eighties. Besides, one could argue that since we live longer we have more time to exploit and accrue benefits that way.

The second reason Brett and Alex offer for continuing to explore is that exploring simply feels good. Once you factor into the explore-exploit model the value you get from trying new things for the sake of it, mere exploitation becomes less attractive. Exploring is inherently valuable because it breaks monotony and gives us new experiences.

Here’s a third reason to add into the mix. We should keep exploring because the future does not resemble the past.

Explore-exploit assumes a static world. When nothing changes, finding a local maximum to exploit can indeed generate lots of value over time.

But our world is in constant flux. We live in a time where more and more is being created by more and more people thanks to technology liberating us from rote labor.

The more creativity, the more the future becomes unpredictable. The value landscape is fluid, the peak you find today might be greatly overshadowed tomorrow.

So, never stop exploring. Even the day before you die, keep exploring.

I’ll leave you with a quote often attributed to Mark Twain but that apparently comes from H. Jackson Brown, Jr. mother’s:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.