Nir Eyal

Yeah.

So this study really blew my mind and here's what it showed.

So it's a little bit depressing, but that's okay because the rats are already dead.

So it already happened.

So we can learn from the study.

So here's what happened.

In this study, Kurt Richter, who is this scientist, he took these rats and at the time he wanted to figure out how long a wild rat could swim for in water.

So he put a rat in a cylinder filled halfway with water and he sat there and he timed how long the rat would keep swimming.

It turns out a wild rat swims for about 15 minutes before it gives up.

Okay, 15 minutes.

Then he wanted to have a little intervention.

He wanted to do something to see if he could increase the amount of time that the wild rat kept swimming.

And so what did he do?

He took a new group of rats,

put them in these same exact cylinders filled halfway with water, and he knew that after about 15 minutes, they were going to give up.

So right before they were about to give up, he reaches in, he pulls out the wrap, dries it off, lets it catch its breath, and plunk, back into the water it goes.

And now he sat there and timed how much longer the rat could swim for.

He did this a few times.

He conditioned the rat.

And he wanted to see how much longer they could swim.