Author:: [[Daniel Gilbert]] DateFinished:: 2/10/2022 Rating:: 9 Tags:: # Stumbling on Happiness  ## 🚀The Book in 3 Sentences - Humans are the only animals with the capability of imagining the future and yet we are terrible at it - Our imaginations of the future are based on our false memories of the past and biased interpretations of the present making our future imaginations often wrong - Instead of trying to imagine a future to bring us happiness we might be better to set a direction, attend to the present, and stumble on it instead ### 🎨 Impressions - Love love love this book. Gilbert has a great conversational tone with the audience and has fantastic studies and explanations to explain his thesis. - One thing that really confused me was the structure of the book. Gilbert weirdly doesn't organize it by the past, present, and future. I think it would have been much more intuitive had he done so. ### 📖Who Should Read It? - Anyone who feels popular happiness books haven't helped them become happier - Psychology enthusiasts ### ☘️ How the Book Changed Me - I have become more antsy about my present impulses and intuitions for what I should do in the future. I need more evidence before I change a course of action. - I realize more fully how important journaling is. It's a crystalization of our thoughts on something in the past. We can use it to more accurately inform our future. - I'm realizing the importance of good decision processes. Processes that help you overcome the biases we tend to have when imagining the future. # Summary [[Why do we think about the future]] [[When humans are selecting they consider the positive aspects of a scenario and when we are rejecting we consider the negative aspects]] [[Some false beliefs survive in the meme pool because they promote their own proliferation]] Remembering and Rationalizing The Past - [[Our memories of the past are inaccurate]] - [[Humans tend to compare the present with the past instead of comparing the present with the possible]] - [[We have a present bias when retrieving memories of the past]] - [[We often don't know why we do what we do resorting to self-perception or societal expectations to answer]] - [[We tend to overestimate how terribly a traumatic event will effect us]] - [[Rationalization is easier in ambiguous situations and harder in concrete ones]] - [[Emotional tendencies for remembering the past changes across cultures]] Experiencing The Present - [[We see the world as we are]] - [[We respond to our subjective interpretation of things, not reality]] - [[When coming across something ambiguous we tend to conceptualize it as something concrete without realizing it]] - [[The brain agrees to believe what the eyes see but the eyes see what the brain believes]] Imagining The Future - [[Our imaginations of the future are often wrong]] - [[Projection bias]] - [[We think we like variety more than we do]] - [[We tend to see things more abstractly when they are more distant temporally, spatially, or emotionally]] - [[Humans are terrible at imagining how a future even will effect them emotionally]] - [[We tend to be less anxious when thinking about the far future than about the near future]] - [[Because our bad predictions of the future often make it harder for us to be happy it might be better for us to stumble upon happiness]] - [[Others might be a more reliable and valid indicator for how a future thing might make us feel then ourselves]] ## Highlights this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you’ve bought one, done everything it says to do, and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to understand why. ([Location 126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=126)) #### PART I Prospection [[The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.]] ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=160)) they have regular squirrel brains that run food-burying programs when the amount of sunlight that enters their regular squirrel eyes decreases by a critical amount. ([Location 166](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=166)) - Note: Gilbert is arguing some animals act as if there is a future but as far as we can tell they don’t have any ability to think about the future. The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. ([Location 181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=181)) There are at least two ways in which brains might be said to make future, ([Location 185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=185)) All brains—human brains, chimpanzee brains, even regular food-burying squirrel brains—make predictions about the immediate, local, personal, future. ([Location 186](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=186)) machines and invertebrates prove that it doesn’t take a smart, self-aware, conscious brain to make simple predictions about the future. ([Location 196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=196)) brains are continuously making predictions about the immediate, local, personal future of their owners without their owners’ awareness. Rather than saying that such brains are predicting, let’s say that they are nexting. ([Location 202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=202)) Adults love to ask children idiotic questions so that we can chuckle when they give us idiotic answers. ([Location 245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=245)) “What do you want to be when you grow up?” ([Location 247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=247)) But notice that while these are the wrong answers to our question, they are the right answers to another question, namely, “What do you want to be now?” ([Location 250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=250)) - Note: As Gilbert argues, we see children as idiots for answering in this way when in reality we fall for the same things all the time. We ask ourselves a question and we answer with what we want to be now. Often we replace a difficult question with an easy one without noticing the difference. We feel anxiety when we anticipate that something bad will happen, and we plan by imagining how our actions will unfold over time. Planning requires that we peer into our futures, and anxiety is one of the reactions we may have when we do.16 The fact that damage to the frontal lobe impairs planning and anxiety so uniquely and precisely suggests that the frontal lobe is the critical piece of cerebral machinery that allows normal, modern human adults to project themselves into the future. ([Location 318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=318)) As such, people whose frontal lobe is damaged are described by those who study them as being “bound to present stimuli,” ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=324)) if the story of the frontal lobe tells us how people conjure their imaginary tomorrows, it doesn’t tell us why. ([Location 355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=355)) [[Why do we think about the future]] The most obvious answer to that question is that thinking about the future can be pleasurable. ([Location 374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=374)) - Note: Dopamine isn’t about motivation in the moment. It’s about anticipation. If we only got motivated to do things when we felt the need to do them in the moment, we wouldn’t keep foraging for food, water, or find shelter in times where we already had some. Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit. ([Location 383](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=383)) Researchers have discovered that when people find it easy to imagine an event, they overestimate the likelihood that it will actually occur. ([Location 392](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=392)) - Note: This is why you hear people at college say all the time that they should hang out more but never do. They find it so easy to imagine they fail to make plans to do so. Because most of us get so much more practice imagining good than bad events, we tend to overestimate the likelihood that good events will actually happen to us, which leads us to be unrealistically optimistic about our futures. ([Location 394](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=394)) Of course, the futures that our brains insist on simulating are not all wine, kisses, and tasty bivalves. ([Location 406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=406)) These dire images make us feel dreadful—quite literally—so why do we go to such great lengths to construct them? ([Location 412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=412)) Two reasons. First, anticipating unpleasant events can minimize their impact. ([Location 413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=413)) - Note: Voluntarily going through adversity or being prepared for it is psychologically less painful than involuntarily going through that adversity. This is why thinking about the future can prepare us and make us feel better about it. The second reason why we take such pains to imagine unpleasant events is that fear, worry, and anxiety have useful roles to play in our lives. We motivate employees, children, spouses, and pets to do the right thing by dramatizing the unpleasant consequences of their misbehaviors, and so too do we motivate ourselves by imagining the unpleasant tomorrows that await us should we decide to go light on the sunscreen and heavy on the éclairs. ([Location 420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=420)) Knowledge is power, and the most important reason why our brains insist on simulating the future even when we’d rather be here now, enjoying a goldfish moment, is that our brains want to control the experiences we are about to have. ([Location 433](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=433)) Why not be here now and there then? There are two answers to this question, one of which is surprisingly right and the other of which is surprisingly wrong. ([Location 438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=438)) The surprisingly right answer is that people find it gratifying to exercise control—not just for the futures it buys them, but for the exercise itself. ([Location 440](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=440)) - Note: Exercising control is the basis for solving all problems and showing creativity. This culminates in effects such as the IKEA Effect. The definition of insanity is literally to doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. gaining control can have a positive impact on one’s health and well-being, but losing control can be worse than never having had any at all. ([Location 462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=462)) - Note: I would suspect over long periods the negative psychological effect from losing some control you once had would dampen because of hedonic adaptation. Our desire to control is so powerful, and the feeling of being in control so rewarding, that people often act as though they can control the uncontrollable. ([Location 463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=463)) People feel more certain that they will win a lottery if they can control the number on their ticket,44 and they feel more confident that they will win a dice toss if they can throw the dice themselves. ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=466)) Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts! ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=474)) In fact, the one group of people who seem generally immune to this illusion are the clinically depressed,48 who tend to estimate accurately the degree to which they can control events in most situations. ([Location 477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=477)) #### PART II Subjectivity The word happiness is used to indicate at least three related things, which we might roughly call emotional happiness, moral happiness, and judgmental happiness. ([Location 569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=569)) Emotional happiness is a phrase for a feeling, an experience, a subjective state, and thus it has no objective referent in the physical world. ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=573)) If we ambled down to the corner pub and met an alien from another planet who asked us to define that feeling, we would either point to the objects in the world that tend to bring it about, or we would mention other feelings that it is like. In fact, this is the only thing we can do when we are asked to define a subjective experience. ([Location 574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=574)) Consider, for instance, how we might define a very simple subjective experience, such as yellow. You may think yellow is a color, but it isn’t. It’s a psychological state. It is what human beings with working visual apparatus experience when their eyes are struck by light with a wavelength of 580 nanometers. ([Location 577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=577)) - Note: People fail to realize the extent to which they see the world as they are. Therefore they can extrapolate what makes them happy onto someone else’s situation thinking “how could anyone be happy in that situation.” They don’t realize happiness is subjective. People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be means to that end. Even when people forgo happiness in the moment—by dieting when they could be eating, or working late when they could be sleeping—they are usually doing so in order to increase its future yield. ([Location 615](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=615)) If every thinker in every century has recognized that people seek emotional happiness, then how has so much confusion arisen over the meaning of the word? One of the problems is that many people consider the desire for happiness to be a bit like the desire for a bowel movement: something we all have, but not something of which we should be especially proud. ([Location 634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=634)) emotional happiness is fine for pigs, but it is a goal unworthy of creatures as sophisticated and capable as we. ([Location 646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=646)) You might be tempted to conclude that the word happiness does not indicate a good feeling but rather that it indicates a very special good feeling that can only be produced by very special means—for example, by living one’s life in a proper, moral, meaningful, deep, rich, Socratic, and non-piglike way. Now that would be the kind of feeling one wouldn’t be ashamed to strive for. In fact, the Greeks had a word for this kind of happiness—eudaimonia—which translates literally as “good spirit” but which probably means something more like “human flourishing” or “life well lived.” For Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and even Epicurus (a name usually associated with piggish happiness), the only thing that could induce that kind of happiness was the virtuous performance of one’s duties, with the precise meaning of virtuous left for each philosopher to work out for himself. ([Location 650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=650)) - Note: Moral happiness comes from the virtuous pursuit of one’s duties. Happiness refers to feelings, virtue refers to actions, and those actions can cause those feelings. But not necessarily and not exclusively. ([Location 678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=678)) When the word happy is followed by the words that or about, speakers are usually trying to tell us that we ought to take the word happy as an indication not of their feelings but rather of their stances. For instance, when our spouse excitedly reveals that she has just been asked to spend six months at the company’s new branch in Tahiti while we stay home and mind the kids, we may say, “I’m not happy, of course, but I’m happy that you’re happy.” ([Location 686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=686)) - Note: Judgmental happiness is an indication of our stance on something. Not about emotional happiness. - [[Three types of happiness]] Our remembrance of things past is imperfect, thus comparing our new happiness with our memory of our old happiness is a risky way to determine whether two subjective experiences are really different. ([Location 758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=758)) - Note: The best we can get at is looking at our past journal entries and trying to cross reference there. And it isn’t just the subtle changes we miss. Even dramatic changes to the appearance of a scene are sometimes overlooked. In an experiment taken straight from the pages of Candid Camera, researchers arranged for a researcher to approach pedestrians on a college campus and ask for directions to a particular building.25 While the pedestrian and the researcher conferred over the researcher’s map, two construction workers, each holding one end of a large door, rudely cut between them, temporarily obstructing the pedestrian’s view of the researcher. As the construction workers passed, the original researcher crouched down behind the door and walked off with the construction workers, while a new researcher, who had been hiding behind the door all along, took his place and picked up the conversation. ([Location 781](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=781)) - Tags: #pink most of the pedestrians failed to notice—failed to notice that the person to whom they were talking had suddenly been transformed into an entirely new individual. ([Location 789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=789)) - Tags: #pink The point of these studies is not that we are hopelessly inept at detecting changes in our experience of the world but rather that unless our minds are keenly focused on a particular aspect of that experience at the very moment it changes, we will be forced to rely on our memories—forced to compare our current experience to our recollection of our former experience—in order to detect the change. ([Location 803](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=803)) - Note: And as we know, our memories are unreliable. once we have an experience, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened. ([Location 871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=871)) - Note: This is why experts aren’t always the best teachers. They don’t understand what it’s like to be a beginner. - [[Once we experience something it's impossible to fully realize what it was like before experiencing it]] Our experiences instantly become part of the lens through which we view our entire past, present, and future, and like any lens, they shape and distort what we see. ([Location 872](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=872)) [[Ignorance can make happiness easier to feel]] Not knowing what we’re missing can mean that we are truly happy under circumstances that would not allow us to be happy once we have experienced the missing thing. It does not mean that those who don’t know what they’re missing are less happy than those who have it. ([Location 899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=899)) - Note: Flow theory explains this phenomenon well. One aspect of flow is being in the Goldilocks zone. But once we have an experience that leads us to increase our relevant skill in an activity, we can find it difficult to enter flow inside of the same activity. ## New highlights added 06-02-2023 at 9:13 AM #### CHAPTER 3 Outside Looking In research shows that physiological arousal can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and our interpretation of our arousal depends on what we believe caused it. ([Location 1013](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1013)) - Note: The misattribution effect. The word experience comes from the Latin experientia, meaning “to try,” whereas the word aware comes from the Greek horan, meaning “to see.” Experience implies participation in an event, whereas awareness implies observation of an event. The two words can normally be substituted in ordinary conversation without much damage, but they are differently inflected. One gives us the sense of being engaged, whereas the other gives us the sense of being cognizant of that engagement. ([Location 1039](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1039)) - Note: Experience means existing in an event where as awareness means active observation of an experience. ### PART III Realism #### CHAPTER 4 In the Blind Spot of the Mind’s Eye the elaborate tapestry of our experience is not stored in memory—at least not in its entirety. Rather, it is compressed for storage by first being reduced to a few critical threads, such as a summary phrase (“Dinner was disappointing”) or a small set of key features (tough steak, corked wine, snotty waiter). ([Location 1313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1313)) when we want to remember our experience, our brains quickly reweave the tapestry by fabricating—not by actually retrieving—the bulk of the information that we experience as a memory.4 This fabrication happens so quickly and effortlessly that we have the illusion (as a good magician’s audience always does) that the entire thing was in our heads the entire time. ([Location 1315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1315)) the moment we have the slightest inclination to consider these things, our brains effortlessly use what they know about delis and lunches and parcels and moms to construct mental pictures (warm pastrami, dark rye, tartan-plaid pajamas with bunny feet) that we experience as the products of imagination. ([Location 1492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1492)) - Note: The moment our brains have the inclination we are sensing something we have a clear schema for we fill in holes in stimuli to see that conceptualization. We do this unconsciously most of the time. because we do not consciously supervise the construction of these mental images, we tend to treat them as we treat memories and perceptions—initially assuming that they are accurate representations of the objects we are imagining. ([Location 1495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1495)) The point here is that when we imagine the future, we often do so in the blind spot of our mind’s eye, and this tendency can cause us to misimagine the future events whose emotional consequences we are attempting to weigh. ([Location 1542](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1542)) - Note: When we imagine the future we tend to conjure up mental conceptions in our brain that come from our previous experiences or the things we have heard from others. But these might not be accurate to what the actual event will be like. You are a very fine person, I’m sure. But you are a very bad wizard. ([Location 1577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1577)) - Note: We are very bad at creating accurate imaginiations toward the future. We are bad wizards. - #### CHAPTER 5 The Hound of Silence studies show that when ordinary people want to know whether two things are causally related, they routinely search for, attend to, consider, and remember information about what did happen and fail to search for, attend to, consider, and remember information about what did not. ([Location 1642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1642)) - Note: Humans are terrible of thinking statistically. The hidden data problem causes this. We don’t fairly account for things that we don’t experience ourselves because we either are ignorant or it’s just a number when we are selecting, we consider the positive attributes of our alternatives, and when we are rejecting, we consider the negative attributes. ([Location 1668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1668)) just as we tend to treat the details of future events that we do imagine as though they were actually going to happen, we have an equally troubling tendency to treat the details of future events that we don’t imagine as though they were not going to happen. ([Location 1680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1680)) To illustrate this point, I often ask people to tell me how they think they would feel two years after the sudden death of their eldest child. ([Location 1683](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1683)) almost everyone gives me, which is some variation on Are you out of your damned mind? I’d be devastated—totally devastated. I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. I might even kill myself. So who invited you to this party anyway? ([Location 1686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1686)) But in my long history of asking this question and thereby excluding myself from every social circle to which I formerly belonged, I have yet to hear a single person tell me that in addition to these heartbreaking, morbid images, they also imagined the other things that would inevitably happen in the two years following the death of their child. ([Location 1690](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1690)) Whereas the near future is finely detailed, the far future is blurry and smooth. ([Location 1745](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1745)) - Note: Farther an event is in temporal time the more abstractly we think of it. This is why I believe there is worth in planning events a week or two ahead. You are close enough to feel super excited but far away enough you think about how the event aligns with your values rather than succumbing to biological and social controls. The vivid detail of the near future makes it much more palpable than the far future, thus we feel more anxious and excited when we imagine events that will take place soon than when we imagine events that will take place later. ([Location 1792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1792)) ### PART IV Presentism ##### CHAPTER 6 The Future Is Now This tendency to fill in the holes in our memories of the past with material from the present is especially powerful when it comes to remembering our emotions. ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1861)) If the past is a wall with some holes, the future is a hole with no walls. Memory uses the filling-in trick, but imagination is the filling-in trick, and if the present lightly colors our remembered pasts, it thoroughly infuses our imagined futures. More simply said, most of us have a tough time imagining a tomorrow that is terribly different from today, and we find it particularly difficult to imagine that we will ever think, want, or feel differently than we do now. ([Location 1875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1875)) When our eyes and ears do not feed the visual and auditory cortices the information they require to answer the questions we are asked, we request that the information be sent from memory, which allows us to take a fake look and have a fake listen. Because our brains can do this trick, we are able to discover things about songs (the high note occurs on birth) and birds (the flippers are longer than the feet) even when we are all alone in a closet. ([Location 1936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1936)) - Note: The same parts of our brain that get activated actually seeing something, hearing, smelling, tasting, or feeling something get activated when we imagine those things. This is a clever method for predicting future feelings, because how we feel when we imagine an event is usually a good indicator of how we will feel when the event itself transpires. If mental images of rapid breathing and flailing mailbags induce pangs of jealousy and waves of anger, then we should expect a real infidelity to do so with even greater swiftness and reliability. ([Location 1952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=1952)) The emotional experience that results from a flow of information that originates in the world is called feeling; the emotional experience that results from a flow of information that originates in memory is called prefeeling; and mixing them up is one of the world’s most popular sports. ([Location 2004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2004)) For example, in one study, researchers telephoned people in different parts of the country and asked them how satisfied they were with their lives.25 When people who lived in cities that happened to be having nice weather that day imagined their lives, they reported that their lives were relatively happy; but when people who lived in cities that happened to be having bad weather that day imagined their lives, they reported that their lives were relatively unhappy. ([Location 2006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2006)) - Tags: #pink - Note: People use their current feelings as an anchor for answering questions related to the future. We misattribute our feelings now to how we will feel in the future. #### CHAPTER 7 Time Bombs Our extraordinary talent for creating mental images of concrete objects is one of the reasons why we function so effectively in the physical world. ([Location 2065](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2065)) When people need to reason about something abstract, they tend to imagine something concrete that the abstract thing is like and then reason about that instead.2 For most of us, space is the concrete thing that time is like.3 Studies reveal that people all over the world imagine time as though it were a spatial dimension, which is why we say that the past is behind us and the future is in front of us, ([Location 2075](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2075)) Among life’s cruelest truths is this one: Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. ([Location 2115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2115)) when episodes are sufficiently separated in time, variety is not only unnecessary—it can actually be costly. ([Location 2127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2127)) ## New highlights added 08-02-2023 at 5:34 PM The human brain is not particularly sensitive to the absolute magnitude of stimulation, but it is extraordinarily sensitive to differences and changes—that is, to the relative magnitude of stimulation. ([Location 2234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2234)) I will tend to compare the present with the past even when I ought to be comparing it with the possible. ([Location 2268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2268)) - Note: If the price of coffee went up for instance you would be more likely to get mad than put it in perspective and see how relatively cheap it is time wise than doing it yourself. This reminds me of psychological relativism. One of the most insidious things about side-by-side comparison is that it leads us to pay attention to any attribute that distinguishes the possibilities we are comparing. ([Location 2314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2314)) - Note: This is why framing what you care about in a decision before collecting information is so essential. It protects you from considering attributes that you just don’t care about. when I get to Wacky Bob’s Giant Mega Super Really Big World of Cameras, I am confronted by a bewildering panoply of nifty little digital cameras that differ on many attributes. ([Location 2318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2318)) Because side-by-side comparisons cause me to consider all the attributes on which the cameras differ, I end up considering attributes that I don’t really care about but that just so happen to distinguish one camera from another. ([Location 2322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2322)) These facts suggest that if we want to predict how something will make us feel in the future, we must consider the kind of comparison we will be making in the future and not the kind of comparison we happen to be making in the present. ([Location 2334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2334)) [[Presenteism]] ([Location 2383](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2383)) ## New highlights added 09-02-2023 at 9:08 PM ##### PART V Rationalization most people are surprisingly resilient in the face of trauma. The loss of a parent or spouse is usually sad and often tragic, and it would be perverse to suggest otherwise. But the fact is that while most bereaved people are quite sad for a while, very few become chronically depressed and most experience relatively low levels of relatively short-lived distress. ([Location 2429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2429)) If heartbreaks and calamities can be blessings in disguise, then why are their disguises so convincing? The answer is that the human mind tends to exploit ambiguity—and ([Location 2457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2457)) while rats and pigeons may respond to stimuli as they are presented in the world, people respond to stimuli as they are represented in the mind. ([Location 2479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2479)) - Note: This isn’t necessarily true. Some animals have the ability to think more abstractly and also animals can also have abnormalities that make them perceive stimuli differently than other animals. The context through which we receive a stimulus profoundly impacts how we perceive it in the mind. we respond to meanings—and context, frequency, and recency are three of the factors that determine which meaning we will infer when we encounter an ambiguous stimulus. ([Location 2508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2508)) We are not merely spectators of the world but investors in it, and we often prefer that an ambiguous stimulus mean one thing rather than another. ([Location 2510](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2510)) The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants. ([Location 2686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2686)) research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing,1 but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one. ([Location 2779](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2779)) When the word hostile is flashed, volunteers judge others negatively.3 When the word elderly is flashed, volunteers walk slowly.4 When the word stupid is flashed, volunteers perform poorly on tests.5 When these volunteers are later asked to explain why they judged, walked, or scored the way they did, two things happen: First, they don’t know, and second, they do not say, “I don’t know.” Instead, their brains quickly consider the facts of which they are aware (“I walked slowly”) and draw the same kinds of plausible but mistaken inferences about themselves that an observer would probably draw about them (“I’m tired”). ([Location 2782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2782)) - Note: When people don’t know why they are doing what they are doing they often perceive their actions and make up reasons for why they might have been doing those actions. This agrees with self perception theory. For positive views to be credible, they must be based on facts that we believe we have come upon honestly. We accomplish this by unconsciously cooking the facts and then consciously consuming them. ([Location 2802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2802)) In short, we do not realize that our views will change because we are normally unaware of the processes that change them. ([Location 2816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2816)) - Note: The unconscious processes by which we turn trauma into a growth experience are not normally known to us. This makes us overestimate how terrible a traumatic experience will be in the future. We fail to realize all the things that might happen after that experience which will make us feel different about it. This fact can make it quite difficult to predict one’s emotional future. ([Location 2817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2817)) In one study, volunteers were given the opportunity to apply for a good-paying job that involved nothing more than tasting ice cream and making up funny names for it.10 The application procedure required the volunteer to undergo an on-camera interview. Some of the volunteers were told that their interview would be seen by a judge who had sole discretionary authority to decide whether they would be hired (judge group). Other volunteers were told that their interview would be seen by a jury whose members would vote to decide whether the volunteer should be hired (jury group). Volunteers in the jury group were told that as long as one juror voted for them, they would get the job—and thus the only circumstance under which they would not get the job was if the jury voted unanimously against them. All of the volunteers then underwent an interview, and all predicted how they would feel if they didn’t get the job. A few minutes later, the researcher came into the room and explained apologetically that after careful deliberation, the judge or jury had decided that the volunteer just wasn’t quite right for the job. The researcher then asked the volunteers to report how they felt. ([Location 2817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2817)) - Tags: #pink The results of the study are shown in figure 19. As the bars on the left show, volunteers in the two groups expected to feel equally unhappy. After all, rejection is a major whack on the nose, and we expect it to hurt whether the whacker is a judge, a jury, or a gang of Orthodox rabbis. And yet, as the bars on the right show, the whacks hurt more when they were administered by a jury than by a judge. Why? Well, just imagine that you’ve applied for a job as a swimsuit model, which requires that you don something skimpy and parade back and forth in front of some gimlet-eyed twit in a three-dollar suit. If the twit looked you over, shook his head, and said, “Sorry, but you’re not model material,” you’d probably feel bad. For a minute or two. But this is the sort of interpersonal rejection that everyone experiences from time to time, and after a few minutes, most of us get over it and on with our lives. We do this quickly because our psychological immune systems have no trouble finding ways to exploit the ambiguity of this experience and soften its sting: “The guy wasn’t paying attention to my extraordinary pivot” or “He’s one of those weirdos who prefers height to weight” or “I’m supposed to take fashion advice from a guy with a suit like that?” ([Location 2829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2829)) - Tags: #pink - Note: When a memory is ambiguous we have the cognitive abilities to shape it. This is why an ambiguous traumatic event is often overcome. But if we experience a concrete traumatic event like getting rejected by a ton of juries at once like in the study, we don’t have the same room for shaping the memory. Yet we fail to predict this beforehand. I can apply this for example to my stand up comedy performing. If no one laughs it will be very painful. If some people laugh I can shape the memory. ## New highlights added 11-02-2023 at 8:26 AM studies also show that nine out of ten people are wrong. Indeed, in the long run, people of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did, which is why the most popular regrets include not going to college, not grasping profitable business opportunities, and not spending enough time with family and friends. ([Location 2877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2877)) - Note: We feel more regret from inaction than action. The psychological immune system is a defensive system, and it obeys this same principle. When experiences make us feel sufficiently unhappy, the psychological immune system cooks facts and shifts blame in order to offer us a more positive view. But it doesn’t do this every time we feel the slightest tingle of sadness, jealousy, anger, or frustration. ([Location 2901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2901)) The paradoxical consequence of this fact is that it is sometimes more difficult to achieve a positive view of a bad experience than of a very bad experience. ([Location 2906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2906)) why do we forgive our siblings for behavior we would never tolerate in a friend? Why aren’t we disturbed when the president does something that would have kept us from voting for him had he done it before the election? Why do we overlook an employee’s chronic tardiness but refuse to hire a job seeker who is two minutes late for the interview? ([Location 2943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2943)) we are more likely to look for and find a positive view of the things we’re stuck with than of the things we’re not. ([Location 2946](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=2946)) - Tags: #c2 Unexplained events have two qualities that amplify and extend their emotional impact. First, they strike us as rare and unusual. ([Location 3034](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3034)) The second reason why unexplained events have a disproportionate emotional impact is that we are especially likely to keep thinking about them. ([Location 3043](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3043)) Explanation robs events of their emotional impact because it makes them seem likely and allows us to stop thinking about them. Oddly enough, an explanation doesn’t actually have to explain anything to have these effects—it merely needs to seem as though it does. ([Location 3052](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3052)) - Note: Once the curiosity gap has been filled we no longer feel the need to answer it. This is why university lectures would benefit from creating questions at the beginning of lecture and leaving on a cliffhanger. The poet John Keats noted that whereas great authors are “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” the rest of us are “incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.”39 Our relentless desire to explain everything that happens may well distinguish us from fruit flies, but it can also kill our buzz. ([Location 3069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3069)) #### PART VI Corrigibility infrequent or unusual experiences are often among the most memorable, ([Location 3158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3158)) The fact that the least likely experience is often the most likely memory can wreak havoc with our ability to predict future experiences. ([Location 3177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3177)) - Note: Our availability heuristic can wreak havoc on our estimations for how an event will make us feel. For example, in one study, researchers asked commuters waiting on a subway platform to imagine how they would feel if they missed their train that day. ([Location 3178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3178)) - Tags: #pink when commuters were asked to make predictions about how they would feel if they missed their train that day, they mistakenly expected the experience to be much more inconvenient and frustrating than it likely would have been. ([Location 3192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3192)) - Tags: #pink - Note: The train memories that came to mind were the ones where the worst things happened leading people to conclude they would be much worse off than they actually would. Because we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times, the wealth of experience that young people admire does not always pay clear dividends. ([Location 3203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3203)) - Note: We also suffer from the peak end rule. We remember the peaks of events and the end of events rather than the events as a whole. Our brains use facts and theories to make guesses about past events, and so too do they use facts and theories to make guesses about past feelings.18 Because feelings do not leave behind the same kinds of facts that presidential elections and ancient civilizations do, our brains must rely even more heavily on theories to construct memories of how we once felt. ([Location 3292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3292)) - Note: [[We often use theories to guess how a experience made us feel when we don't have any objective catalogue]]. the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves the needs of a stable society, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth. Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being. ([Location 3495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3495)) - Note: In effect, sometimes faulty beliefs survive in a system because they promote their own transmission. If they didn’t get spread the whole system would fall apart. The belief-transmission game explains why we believe some things about happiness that simply aren’t true. The joy of money is one example. The joy of children is another that for most of us hits a bit closer to home. Every human culture tells its members that having children will make them happy. ([Location 3503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3503)) Yet if we measure the actual satisfaction of people who have children, a very different story emerges. As figure 23 shows, couples generally start out quite happy in their marriages and then become progressively less satisfied over the course of their lives together, getting close to their original levels of satisfaction only when their children leave home. ([Location 3515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3515)) The belief-transmission network of which we are a part cannot operate without a continuously replenished supply of people to do the transmitting, thus the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes a part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it. ([Location 3531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3531)) If you believe (as I do) that people can generally say how they are feeling at the moment they are asked, then one way to make predictions about our own emotional futures is to find someone who is having the experience we are contemplating and ask them how they feel. Instead of remembering our past experience in order to simulate our future experience, perhaps we should simply ask other people to introspect on their inner states. Perhaps we should give up on remembering and imagining entirely and use other people as surrogates for our future selves. ([Location 3560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3560)) if you are like most people, then like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people. Science has given us a lot of facts about the average person, and one of the most reliable of these facts is that the average person doesn’t see herself as average. ([Location 3643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3643)) - Note: We see ourselves as better than average. We also see ourselves as less biased than average because of the Im not biased bias. We don’t always see ourselves as superior, but we almost always see ourselves as unique. ([Location 3659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000GCFW0A&location=3659)) When we make choices about our futures based on this inaccurate information, those choices end up hindering our future happiness. For this reason, it seems that we more often stumble on happiness than successfully create it. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/ab0ea5f6-b71e-4538-8fdb-4fb977fda441)) - Note: Pursuing happiness paradoxically can make us less happy. Gilbert argues that virtuous behavior isn’t tantamount to happiness. Others go even further to argue that if you act virtuously with the expectation of it making you happy, it reduces the virtue of the act. In Skin in the Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb proposes that the smaller the reward you receive personally for a virtuous act, the more virtuous it is. Indeed, virtuous behavior should make you somewhat uncomfortable, he says, because it should require you to make a sacrifice or take a risk.) ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/1545b1ad-8faf-4809-95b2-ff84795fc6d0)) - Note: I felt psychological pain helping a new speech speaker with his example finding because I knew it wasn’t aiding my skills. But this is what made the behavior virtuous. I was doing something without much reward but was still good. Shortform note: Gilbert describes our tendency to positively interpret the present as universal. However, there may be cultures that are more likely to view events positively than others. For instance, many Latin American countries have high Positive Experience Indices (PEIs) because they focus on the positive facets of life and have a strong ability to take joy in experiences.) ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/460cd295-8b38-4780-9e49-272fbdb8b26d)) - Note: Our autobiographical selfs change based on our culture. We tend to remember things in a different light. Shortform note: Gilbert outlines one form of comparison we often make—against those who are worse off—but humans also habitually compare themselves to those who are better off. In 12 Rules for Life, Jordan B. Peterson argues that because we now receive vast amounts of information about other peoples’ lives through mass media, we feel compelled to compare ourselves to others who seem like they’re doing better than we are. This leaves us feeling bad, rather than good, about ourselves.) ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/1e0956de-4ec6-4ddb-a177-658f9d1e471a)) - Note: We compare ourselves with those in our immediate environment. Not the objective truth. You can lessen this impact by upwardly comparison yourself with an growth mindset. One way you can lessen the negative emotional affect of remembering past events is to reflect with a learning view rather than a mistake view. What learnings can you take from the mistakes? (Shortform note: How can you reduce the unhappiness you feel about moderately bad events if your brain won’t do so automatically? You could practice deep breathing to reduce stress and irritation or try to find humor in unpleasant situations. You might also adopt a solutions-oriented approach to the bad event, considering what steps you can take to actively make things better.) ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/1684cc01-fd40-4db7-a72e-9986b520c388)) Gilbert writes that you fabricate visions of the future that reflect events and experiences you’ve already been through, rather than new events and experiences yet to come. This is because, as described above, when you imagine future scenarios, your brain uses existing references—your current experiences and memories. The result, concludes Gilbert, is that your visions of the future don’t reflect what the future will be like. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/3f7448a5-ffcc-49c3-b32c-c56ae823cbed)) - Note: Gilbert has an overly negative view of humans ability to imagine the future. It can be helpful at times. In imaginable, McGonigal shows how thinking about how you will act in a situation be her hand primes you to act that way when the situation comes. You can prepare yourself to ignore negative system 1 tendencies. This reminds me of how we tend to see humans as irrational. One way to do this is by implementing a rigorous decision-making process in a spreadsheet: Step 1: State the goal of your decision—for instance, to move to a new city where you can live for the next 10 years. Step 2: Brainstorm options for achieving this goal. In this case, you’d write down cities you’re considering. Step 3: Define a set of criteria by which you’ll judge each option. At this point, rather than having an emotional reaction to your memories of both cities and making a decision based on that reaction, you’d instead decide what living criteria matter to you: cost of living, proximity to public transit, and so on. Step 4: Assign a degree of importance to each criterion. You might value the cost of living over proximity to public transit, as you’re on a budget. Step 5: Define questions about how well each option fits the criteria. You might define the question “What is the average cost of a condo in each city?” Step 6: Perform rounds of research to answer the questions and rank the different options based on your findings and the degree of importance of each criterion. (Don’t be afraid to re-rank the options based on new information as you continue your research.) ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/4161160c-7b7d-478b-a4d0-5daaefe9fc85)) ## New highlights added 12-02-2023 at 7:03 PM According to Gilbert, you opt for choices that grant you greater freedom in the future, when, in reality, the choices that limit your freedom make you happier. You’re happier when you have less freedom thanks again to your automatic happiness-protecting response, writes Gilbert. This response triggers when you have little power and few options so that despite this adversity you can still be happy. However, you’re not aware this response will kick in. Therefore, you always make the choice that keeps your options open to avoid the discomfort you think lack of choice will bring. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/94193a61-088b-497e-bd74-66206c44381a)) - Note: This reminds me of the paradox of choice. People with kids aren’t happy. They report low levels of happiness from childbirth until their kids go to college. The reason we perpetuate this lie is because of Correction Error #3: We remember feeling the way we believe we should have felt while parenting—happy and rewarded—not the way we actually felt: unhappy and tired. ([View Highlight](https://www.shortform.com/app/highlights/69a7d01c-9326-4844-b4e4-e467d912e714))