SIX at 6: The Inverted-U, Killing Pleasure, The Goldilocks Zone, Too Much Cake, Immigrants To Wealth, and Enough
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SIX at 6: The Inverted-U, Killing Pleasure, The Goldilocks Zone, Too Much Cake, Immigrants To Wealth, and Enough
humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the
William B. Irvine • A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.
Anna Lembke • Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
“Momentary happiness is a state that reflects not how well things are going but instead whether things are going better than expected.”
Brian Christian • The Alignment Problem
We know that if you’re starving, lonely, or in pain, you’ll probably get happier if you get food, friends, and relief. After that, the returns diminish very quickly. You could read all the positive psychology you want, take the online version of The Science of Wellbeing ("Yale’s Most Popular Course Ever!”), read my post on hacking the hedonic tread... See more
Adam Mastroianni • Why aren't smart people happier?
According to Epicurus, we are happy when we feel pleasant sensations and are free from unpleasant ones. Jeremy Bentham similarly maintained that nature gave dominion over man to two masters – pleasure and pain – and they alone determine everything we do, say and think. Bentham’s successor, John Stuart Mill, explained that happiness is nothing but p
... See moreYuval Noah Harari • Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
The problem, though, is that once they fulfill a desire for something, they adapt to its presence in their life and as a result stop desiring it—or at any rate, don’t find it as desirable as they once did. They end up just as dissatisfied as they were before fulfilling the desire. One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process:
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