The Happiness Hypothesis
by Jonathan Haidt
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Abundance of information means some information is lost because it can't be found.
Psychology of well being is linked to ancient wisdom, many of the ideas that we now find scientific basis for where figured out by people long ago already.
Changing your mind is usually a more effective response to frustration than is changing the world.
Happiness can come from both within and outside. Both forms are important. Sometimes changing the world is the way to go about it.
We can be confronted by ideas that would change our lives, but if we don't engage with them deeply, we miss the point. We have seen the right things, yet don't know anything.
Chapter 1 - The Divided Self
Humans think in metaphors.
Different metaphors for the mind across time: the tamed wild elephant of Buddhism, the chariot with the crooked and straight horse by Plato, and the chariot with the crazy horse wanting to go everywhere, the chariot driver trying to control it, and their father sitting in a sidecar commenting how they do everything wrong of Freud (id, ego and superego respectively).
People are not (only) rational even though much of science assumes that of them.
Book Recommendation: Metamorphoses - Ovid
The mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict.
Minds are more like committees with different purposes working together than a "united" whole.
It is divided between body and brain, between left and right hemispheres, between new and old (lymbic vs. neo cortex) and controlled vs. automatic.
The gut has lots of neurons doing processing that help it do it's work, and so does the autonomic nervous system in general, that makes our bodies work without conscious effort.
Cutting the Corpus Callosum doesn't impair patients as much as you would expect. The two brain halves can't communicate anymore, yet people seem normal. Left half does right part of the body, right half left part of the body, right hemispheres is good at processing spatial patterns, left is better at language processing, and analytical tasks.
Thing on the left is seen but can't be talked about because right brain doesn't have control over language center necessary, but it can point the left hand towards the object seen.
It's like there is "separate" intelligence in each hemisphere.
People confabulate stories on why these differences in perception exist. The left part produces a commentary on what the self is doing.
Split brain studies are crazy.
The Promethean Script is the idea that human minds evolved reason but are new to it and haven't mastered and integrated it into the rest of their brains which is why it is often clashing with our more animalistic (lymbic) instincts. The rationality sits in the prefrontal cortex the one that is most enlarged and connected in humans compared to other animals.
This story misses one point, the prefrontal cortex also makes us better at emotional things. The orbit frontal cortex specifically is involved in the emotionality of humans in the wanting and avoiding, compared to the limbic system.
People with orbitofrontal cortex damage lose the ability to make decisions. The thing that tells them whether something would feel good or bad is gone, hence they see the possibilities but can't decide.
Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality.
Brains control most of the workings outside consciousness, automatically integrating information necessary for survival. The new, methodical reasoning parts are slower and not parallel. They are not perfected yet by evolution, like the automated processes are. They also involve language and abstract concepts and are something fairly unique to humans. That's also why it's hard to build motor and perceptual systems that can rival those of animals or humans. These automatic systems are much smarter than our reasoning capabilities. Because they had much much longer to evolve.
The higher level control frees humans from stimulus response patterns. We can think before we have to act. And then can decide not to. Deliberation is something new to humans.
Book Recommendation: The Imp of the Perverse - Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 2 - Changing your Mind
You have control over your reactions to your life and when you fully realize that and make use of it you are free of pain.
Book Recommendation: The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius
Reframing Moments of suffering is temporary though. The brain has a way of going back to it's old and hurting ways.
Epiphanies can be life altering but most fade in days or weeks.
The subconscious automatic mind tends to be pessimistic because that was better for survival retraining it permanently is a hard task.
We make split second decisions if we like something or not. These happen below the level of consciousness and can be influenced by words or images that we aren't even aware because they flashed before our eyes so fast. An example, when people rate words if they liked them or not, the time necessary to rate the word, depends on wether a negative word was flashed subliminally before. Also, it works with racial bias, i.e. people need longer to react to a "good" word if before there was flashed a face of a person of a different skin color.
People like the sound of their names too. And the statistical likelihood that somebody named Denise becomes a dentist is significantly skewed. Names have an effect on life decisions because we feel good when we encounter our own name which subtly steers our decision making.
Humans have negativity bias. We react more quickly and strongly to negative stimulus.
Two systems in the mind compete with each other, action and inaction, approach vs. withdrawal. The withdrawal one can act faster and more strongly sometimes.
Genes play a bigger role in determining personalities as most people realize. Identical Twins separated at birth grow up to be very similar regardless of the different families they are raised by. Genes are like recipes for building persons with specific traits.
Happiness is a heritable trait.
Three ways to change it though: meditation, cognitive therapy and Prozac.
Attachments are like a game of roulette in which someone else spins the wheel and the game is rigged: the more you play, the more you lose. The only way to win is to step away from the table.
Meditation is a way of taking the mind, and "stepping away" from the table.
Depressions is a feedback loop where thoughts amplify negative events. Cognitive behavioral therapy is about disrupting this feedback loop. Be aware of the loop, then break it whenever it happens with small rituals. And it works surprisingly well but is hard. Constant work is necessary in the beginning to rewire the brain to not feel helplessly sad anymore.
Prozac is very efficient at dealing with depression. However it has side effects, sometimes changes personality of people and the effects stop when off the drug. It works much easier than cognitive therapy. Separating work from improvement like that is seen by some as problematic though.
Chapter 3 - Reciprocity with a Vengeance
People send back Christmas cards to strangers, kind of on autopilot. Because we implement tit for tat strategies in our relationships with others.
Tit for tat is amplified by the feelings of gratitude and vengeance. When somebody is mean to you, you actually punish them, often more than how mean they were to you.
Gossip also plays a key role in this. By sharing information about who is doing what we can punish the exploiters by negating them access from further cooperation with others.
Brain size correlates with social group size. One of the possible reasons why we have such large brains is because bigger group sizes had a selective pressure. The log of the brain size would suggest group sizes of around 150. This is known as Dunbars number.
Language might be a replacement for grooming. I.e. it is a way of establishing trust and getting to know new groups of people and becoming able to cooperate with them in a very short amount of time.
Success is largely a matter of playing the social game well. It's not what you know it's who you know.
Humans gossip as a way to determine meaningful partners for reciprocate relationships.
Reciprocity is so automatic that people use it for marketing and dark sales tactics all the time.
Book Recommendation: Influence - Robert Cialdini