Principlev1
Before acting on excitement about a new opportunity, verify
Before acting on excitement about a new opportunity, verify alignment with established values and test whether enthusiasm persists after a deliberate delay to filter novelty-driven dopamine responses from genuine opportunity detection.
Why This Is a Principle
Derives from Dopamine neurons fire when a reward is anticipated based on (dopamine as prediction signal), Human motivation includes separable 'wanting' and 'liking' (wanting/liking decoupling), and Humans discount future rewards hyperbolically rather than (hyperbolic discounting). Prescribes a filtering protocol to distinguish high-quality from low-quality excitement signals before commitment. Actionable and applicable to opportunity evaluation.