feature or a bug?

Our cognitive apparatus is designed, at least in part, to sustain us in the long term rather than balm us in the near term.

The ease of having an ambition is that it can be explained to others; the very disease of ambition is that it can be so easily explained to others. DAVID WHYTE

We should accept that our brains are strange, delicate instruments that evade our direct commands and are perplexingly talented at warding off the very ideas that might save us or help us flourish.

The human mind is a remarkable contraption, great at keeping us psychologically buoyant in periods of chaos and allowing us to pay the price later, once the storm has settled.

A 2018 study found that people typically pursue higher levels of education because they believe it will lead to more leisure time. But, in fact, more educated people tend to have less leisure time.13 They earn more money, but also work more hours. This upends their expectations and ends up having a net zero effect on overall happiness.

THE GREAT TRIUMPH (OR horrible tragedy, depending on how you look at it) of being human is that our brains have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to understand our mortality.

We’re good at learning by tinkering—which is fortunate, because we’re terrible at getting things right the first time.

human belief systems are good at absorbing contradictions into their thinking.