Modern Wisdom - #402 - Paul Bloom - Why Pain & Suffering Are Necessary For A Good Life

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University and an author. People do strange things to feel pleasure. Eating spicy food, having rough sex, watching scary movies. On top of that, they make huge sacrifices to find meaning, like having children or starting a business or training for a marathon. This suggests that perhaps there is more to living a good life than simple hedonistic pleasure. Expect to learn the four ways that we enjoy suffering, how the sexual fantasies of men & women differ, the true red pill around whether more money will make you happier, what you can learn about mindfulness from a dominatrix, why people love to watch sad movies, how a life without discomfort will become hell and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Buy The Sweet Spot - https://amzn.to/3DtmiSb Follow Paul on Twitter - https://twitter.com/paulbloomatyale  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy everyone, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Paul Bloom. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, professor emeritus of psychology at Yale University, and an author. People do strange things to feel pleasure, eating spicy food, having rough sex, watching scary movies. On top of that, they make huge sacrifices to find meaning, like having children or starting a business

or training for a marathon. This suggests that perhaps there is more to living a good life than simple hedonistic pleasure. I expect to learn the four ways that we enjoy suffering, how the sexual fantasies of men and women differ, the true red pill around where the more money will make you happier, what you can learn about mindfulness from a dominatrix, why people love to watch sad movies, how a life without discomfort will become hell, and much more. This is a conversation that I'm having so much at the moment, the fact that a hyper-convenient world leads to us actually being miserable, that challenge is inherently something that makes us feel good about life, and Paul's gone. So deep with this, finding what he's called the sweet spot in between pleasure and pain, the amount of suffering

that we need in order to live a meaningful and enjoyable life. I really hope that you enjoy this. If you do check out the book, it's a really good read. It's linked in the show notes below as always and share it with a friend. Share this episode with a friend. The only way that this show grows is from people like you sharing the episodes with other people like you. But now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Paul Bloom. Hopefully, look at the show. Thanks for having me back. My pleasure, man.

Why are you talking about suffering today? I have come up with a new book called The Sweet Spot. The pleasure is suffering a search for meaning, and it is a topic which I have been occupied by for many years and I think is athlete fascinating. I think suffering connects to all sorts of bright, some nice explanations for some very odd and puzzling behavior, connects to movies, connects to sex, connects to purpose and life. And I think also just tell us some interesting things about human nature. What's the... You're a man to talk to about this.

Yeah, true. What's the core message of the book? What when I started the book, I was interested in puzzles about what psychologists call benign massacism. So why do people like spicy foods are hot bass or scary movies or sad movies and all of that. And I was just focusing on a role of explaining the message was going to be here's why we use pain and suffering to increase the

amount of pleasure in our lives. But as I began to do this more and more and look at this and read philosophers and read psychologists, I began to realize a lot of the suffering we choose isn't in the service of pleasure, but in the service of other goals, like meaning and morality. So pretty late into working on a book, I think the message is what you can call motivational pluralism, which is people want more than one thing. We want pleasure, but we also want morality, we want meaning, and that's one bit of message, a rest of the message is that sometimes chosen suffering of the right sort is just what we need to get us there. How do you define pleasure, meaning and morality?

It's a good question. You could start off by defining it in kind of a rough and intuitive way. So roughly, pleasures, things we seek out and we go, we make us smile, make us happy. Give us a glow. So if you're hungry at Hotfoot Sundays, pleasure for most of us, you know, sex, being loved, nice artwork, a beautiful walk, a a beautiful day. That's pleasure. Morality is doing the right thing, and you know, doing the right thing, which could mean involve fairness and justice, it could mean helping somebody, it could mean harming somebody, applying some sort of more, more, more, more, more principle. And meaning is a different

animal altogether, connected to the other two, but meaning is a pursuit connected to that has significance that takes a while, that influences other people, that involves goals and sub-goles, and most of all requires some degree of difficulty, sometimes physical pains and anxiety, sometimes suffering. If you have a pursuit and you find it easy and natural and fun, it probably isn't a meaningful one. It could be a fun one. So, you know, a fun pursuit is eating some M&Ms, going for a nice walk. A meaningful pursuit could be raising children starting

a business, going to war. A moral pursuit could be raising children starting a business going to war. A moral pursuit could be helping a friend and trouble, you know, trying to punish somebody who did something around trying to fight for justice. And they're all related, but they take you in different directions. What is some of the ways that people use suffering to get pleasure then? Yeah, there's a lot of ways. The simplest answer is probably simply contrast. So one of the tricks we can do is we can experience a bit of chosen pain. And so as to make the subsequent experience more pleasurable, you know, you eat really spicy food that burns your mouth and take a sweet of beer and that feels magnificent. You go into really hot sauna hot, hot, to a hot finish sauna, you dive into a cool lake and then you are in bliss or take a broader time scale. You must have seen John Wick. Yeah, they don't. So the beginning of the movie is

they kill his dog. It's in a trailer beginning of the movie is they kill his dog. No, it's in a trailer. Not a spot. They kill his dog. That's actually very sad. He loved that dog. He's a retired assassin. And he has a dog.

His dead wife gives him a dog. Loves his dog. They kill the dogs. And when Russian monsters, this bad thing happens. But then he goes and takes his revenge and kills everybody. And then a comic explosion of homicide. And the second, two thirds of the movie is enjoyable because the first third sets up the contrast.

And it would be a mistake for you to say, oh, John, great movie. You know what it made it better if you took away the dog part, which is really a bummer, because it got to be so much fun because you had the contrast in the beginning and there are people who do these these big data analyses of movies and stories and novels and plays and a very typical pattern is things get bad bad bad bad and then it get better and there's a pleasure to that. Inheriting that you talk about the importance of the ordering or the sequence of suffering and pleasure. Can you dig into that? There's all these interesting facts about ordering and time that I think we know and are gut intuitively and we often play with it. But here's the

simplest. You have bad stuff, you have good stuff, that's the order you want it in. So, I'm doing movies today. So, you know, Shawshank Redemption. This guy spends 20 years in prison for a crime. Presumably didn't commit, although there's weird interpretation of the movie where it was unclear. And then, and this is spoiler day, but he escapes and spends the rest of his wonderful life in a Mexican beach. And you feel wonderful at the film. Imagine that we're reversed.

He's living on his Mexican beach having a wonderful time with his friend and in the end, so the prison rest was like the same amount of time. That had sucked. And in general, there's sort of a balance we want things to get better. There's these studies which ask people about the kind of jobs they want. So you want a job that starts off low paying and gets higher paying, higher paying, or the reverse. And imagine it's so happen that this is calibrator, so that maybe the one that went down gives you more money and total. Still, who wants that? You want things to get better.

And so there's sort of the dance of time. And sometimes we do the dance of time to give ourselves pleasure and kind of clever ways. So in my favorite studies is by George Lohanstein. He asked people this great question. He says, imagine you could kiss your favorite movie star in the lips, fully, consensually and pleasurable. we start in the lips, fully, consensually, and pleasurable. And then he says, when do you want to do it? Now, psychology 101 says, right now, self-control is hard, we're greedy for time. Economics 101 says, right now, because you know,

the same sort of temporal discounting better get $10 a day and $10 tomorrow, that's why we have interest. And so on. People say, two days. Two days and it turns out that what people want to do is they want to save the idea. They want to they want to take some time to save and anticipation of the pleasure they're going to get. Similarly for bad things, even though economics and psychology says, put them off as long as you can,

as sometimes we do that. Sometimes we do that. Sometimes we try to get on mobile with, because we're worried about the experience of dread. What like? Pardon me? What like? And what ways do we do it? Oh, I take a dentist appointment.

So under some circumstances, you just put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off forever. But sometimes things weigh on you. And if you ask people, you wanna do it now, you wanna do it tomorrow, they'll say now. Hit me with it now, let's get it all the way. And it's true there's a good be a rationality to doing it tomorrow because, you know,

maybe you'll die or something, and then you're lucky you don't get the appointment. But if you do it now, at least you don't have to live through the dread. I wrote a newsletter about this a little while ago and turned it anxiety cost. So in the same way as you have opportunity cost, the anxiety cost of, it was a justification for me if someone has a daily habit that they want to do, let's say it's meditation or it's some stretching or it's walk the dog or whatever it is, I argued that because your daily requirement resets,

essentially every morning as soon as you wake up, that's the beginning of your day to complete this. If you spend most of the day reminding yourself that you still need to do that thing later on in the day, you have spent that day suffering this anxiety cost, whereas if you get your morning routine locked in, and you meditate first thing, you just get to bathe in the fact that this self-righteousness upon your high horse for the rest of the

day, being so congratulatory about the fact that you meditated and did your stretching first thing. I love giving advice and it's the primary bit of advice, which is do your most important thing right away in the morning. And most of the way, this is also the hardest. You know, if it's easy and fun, you away in the morning. And most of my, this is also the hardest, you know, if it's easy and fun, you could, you could, you could weigh the bit. But and for me, it's writing, which is, you know, I, I'll, I want to write an hour each day. And if I don't do it in the morning, I could put it off and I feel bad and so on. But you

just, you just want to get it done right away. And, you know, there's a satisfaction in it. It's, it's an example of something. There's all sorts of activities working out and writing are two real go-to examples. But are that much fun when you do them? I don't know, maybe your mileage may vary. But there's always email or Twitter or hanging out with friends and so on. But having done them gives you a certain satisfaction.

And that's another reason for the contour that we want. Yeah, so that's contrast, but you also talk about signalling in mastery as well. Yes, there's, um, there's all sorts of things. So one of the one, one reason, and then there's one other which we'll mention, but one way you get a pleasure from suffering is the pleasure of a good name, Jeremy Bentham's term, of good reputation. So sometimes we choose to suffer to impress others with how tough we are. You know, I was once sat my son and some of his friends and they started having a wasabi eating contest.

And you know, they wouldn't have done it by themselves, but all the guys are there. And they wanted to show how tough they are. In a religious context, you may want to show how pious you are. And there's also to religious rituals involving a lot of suffering and pain and deprivation, but you do them to show, you know, look, look, look, look what a believer in. Look how, how faithful I am to God. Sometimes a very different thing is when people will cut themselves or harm themselves as a cry for help. And there you're not signaling strength or signaling need. So you have signaling as one thing.

You have to joy of mastery. It feels good to be in control of something, to be able to sort of exert your will over your body. And this is one important contrast I make in the book, which is absolutely critical, is I'm talking about chosen suffering, unchosen suffering, bad stuff that happens, he was a very different thing. So CS Lewis gives a great example of fasting, where he says, you know, if you're not eating because you have no free kind of food or someone's locked you in a room with no food, that just sucks.

That's just you're just suffering. Try to make the most of it, but that's awful. But if you're not eating because you're fasting, then you could feel proud. In fact, the CS Lewis, being CS Lewis disapproves and says, you know, you shouldn't be so proud of yourself. Just, you know, worship God and get over yourself. But still, there's a sense of pride. And one of the things that we're going through the list

that pain can do is it can be an escape from yourself. It can be a escape from consciousness. You know, I described my book the first time I ever sparred in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and rolled with somebody who was like, everybody else in the gym, younger and stronger than me. And so it's like two minutes, three minutes. And I realized afterwards that during that period, I thought of nothing else. I didn't worry about the class I had to teach or did better, something I said to my partner

or money problems, whatever. I didn't think, I wonder how I'm looking and everything like that. I was totally immersed in this. And difficulty does that for you. You know, pain does that for you. Of all the bad things to be said about pain, one good thing is it certainly focuses the attention. You told me a story the last time that we spoke about a dominatrix who said, was the quote, nothing captures attention like a whip? They had a good memory, yes, yes. I don't know why we're talking about it.

Say, I wasn't even studying Salem as it is, man, but it's such a good quote. Yes. Yes, you know, he says something like, you hold it up and people's eyes cannot, cannot move away from it. And this is, you know, there's, I think, a deep insight here. There's a wonderful theoretical paper on art asking the question, why is so much art through history grotesque and unpleasant? And the answer is because art is in a constant battle for eyeballs.

You know, yeah, we want people to notice your artwork. And something that's grotesque or unpleasant. Captures it. You look at something like, I don't know, something, a grotesque scene of cannibalism or torture, and it just captures you. And of course, movies work in the same prism. Why do we like scary movies? I think there's different reasons,

but I think that there's one general answer to that, which extends to why we like scary things in general, which is our mind is naturally drawn towards case scenarios. In some way, be a lot of fun. You know, you're free of nothing to do. You just, you think about good stuff. To imagine yourself winning a prize or somebody falls in love with you and everything. But those don't pose any puzzles.

If I win a great prize, I'll say thank you and accept it, and that's great. But what's useful, and I think this is one part of my book where I do get sort of adaptationist. I think where there's a Darwinian advantage to thinking about the bad stuff. The thing about what happens when the world goes to hell. The thing about what happens when your life gets messed up in some way.

And advantage, just thinking about these things is that it, that it basically gets you to prepare and ruminate and deliberate. And there's some evidence that people who have positive fantasies actually make up less well in the world than people of negative fantasies. How do you mean? Thinking about bad stuff. Well, this is some stuff by a psychologist, blank under name at NYU. So she tests these people who are looking for romantic relationships. They're there, you know, or single.

They like to find a partner. And she asked them, how often do you fantasize about being in love? How often do you find it when you're being with the man or woman of your dreams? And the people who say, I want, tend to be the same people as six months later, don't have a partner. The people who are in another study, she asks people who want to lose weight

and is in here, we think of yourself being fit and strong and everything, a lot of them. And the people, again, the people who think about that a lot tend to be the people who don't lose as much weight. And her theory of it is that for these positive fantasies, what you do is you sort of, you kind of consume the pleasure in your imagination and your less motivated to do it in real life. If I'm really fantasized a lot about having a girlfriend, then maybe I'd cry less hard to have a girlfriend. I got my fantasies after all. Now negative ruminations don't have that problem. They are, they are always

focused on the worst case. And I think to go back to your question, one reason why we like scary movies is that they are imaginary and imaginative depictions of worst case scenarios. So take, you know, take zombie films, zombie TV shows. You know, you could make fun of the idea and say, you really need to prepare for zombie apocalypse. But these movies and TV shows are never about zombies, actually. What they are is what happens when the world goes down. And there's no government, there's no police. The dangers in zombie movies are almost always people, not zombies.

And so we're drawn to this. And then there's other ingredients. So you might think fear is negative. And in fact, there were some early theories that said that the people who like horror movies aren't as afraid as people as the people who hate them. It's going to be total nonsense. People who like horror movies are just as afraid as people who don't like them, but they enjoy being afraid. for any negative emotion in the right context, particularly a context where it's imaginary. So you know there's no real danger. It could be a source of pleasure. You could enjoy being afraid, you could enjoy being angry,

you could even enjoy being sad, you could even enjoy physical pain under a right circumstances. Well, there's people who go out of their way to watch sad movies that want to make them cry and make them ballerize out again. It is interesting to think about the fact that this, it's almost like a sandbox, a safe play pen

in which we can indulge ourselves in some of the emotions that are at the extreme areas of life. I would wager that there'll be some people that'll go through life, and some of the most extreme emotions perhaps that they feel in their entire lives will be during watching movies. Yes, yes, or that's right. Or related to this will involve events that are so far away from them to be effectively fictional. When Princess Diana was killed, died in his car crash. People mourned to an extraordinary

degree and there were people who went on TV and said, you know, this was the worst thing has ever happened. When my mom died, that was sad, but all when Princess Diana died, that was really sad. We consumed these emotions. And I think it, it, there's a safety to it. You know, the death of my child would be would would would destroy me. But the death of a child in a in a movie I could if I carefully feel sadness, but at the same time I know nothing bad has really happened. I can feel afraid, but I know nothing scary, nothing dangerous is really about about to happen. So you're safe. In some way, people have described the pleasures of imagination as a form of safe play. I suppose that I suppose that BDSM is

kind of similar to this, but it's got it's acting on a number of the different pathways. So you have the contrast effect that you have something that is painful and it continues and it continues. And then the relief is the moment at which the pain no longer is pain and therefore that's pleasure. But you also have this presence, this escape from self. Perhaps you have a signaling aspect to whoever it is that you're with. Look at how strong or resilient I am,

you can't hurt me. And then maybe there's even an essence of mastery in that you are put into a situation that you know your physiology should be responding to with panic. That's it's asphyxiation or let's say that it's being hit. The usual response should be something other than the one that you are giving, which is a rousal. Yes. It's some way BDSM is a perfect storm where all of the different theories of the pleasures of pain kind of come in and click.

And then raises the question that I do not have an answer to, which is, why do some people like it and some people don't? And same with some people, I know like the cry at movies, some people not, not, not even close. Some people like spicy foods, others don't. And I'll be, I'll be totally honest, because I often think about this. We have no theory as to why some people are this and some people are at. You know, it used to be thought that BDSM is kind of pathological and you kind of look for people who bother disorders in terms of not to be true. You know, people who engage in it are no more likely to suffer psychological problems or have in some way bad personalities and people who don't.

And at some level, the appetite for it is very popular. More often in the imagination than they're doing. So as I was doing research for the book, I was looking at 50 shades of gray, just be the SM story, and it was the most popular book of the last decade. Like this, from 2010 to 2020, that was the most popular book. The second most popular book was The Sequel. The third most popular book was The End of the Trilogy. So there's definitely an audience for this sort of stuff. Though I imagine that the vast majority

of these people wouldn't engage in anything serious. You looked at the sexual fantasies and how they differ between men and women. I think that was Seth Stevens-DeVidowitz's work. And he's a pass guest on the show. That guy is an animal of a data scientist. What did you find out from his work and he's a yes a pass guest on the show that guy's an animal of a data scientist what did you what did you find out from his work Weird stuff There's there's from his book. There's another book awesome like 10 billion wicked thoughts and

Basically if you you know sex research into what people like the uses as people and Basically, if you, you know, sex research into what people like uses as people. And you know, it's very difficult people to be honest. They're often in bannerst or sometimes confused. But maybe one of the purest manifestations of what people like is what they look at when looking at pornography. And so what this data analyst did was you got hold of PornHub data, which there was a lot of. And in fact, PornHub data not only looks at the search terms,

but it also does Google Analytics to make it very good guess as to whether you're a man or woman, how old you are, whether you're gay or sprayed or by or whatever. And there's all sorts of surprises. But the biggest surprise to me, which I don't have such a good story about, is that contrary to everything, well, everything I would have expected, he finds that women tend to search out violent sex or humiliating the whole far more violent, more violent, pacing entertainment in general. A lot of these depictions involve the victimization of women, and you would imagine then women who just naturally stare away from it. And I don't actually fully know what's going on. It may be, again, a worst case scenario thing, which is you're drawn into things which are sort of worse things and

And it it exerts a pull over you and that's what might be saying There's definitely an element of this I think with certain women where domination and the strength of a partner and the power of a partner is a turn on and perhaps seeing that and experiencing it Vicariously is something that they find arousing. It may be in some cases there's some evidence that women have, there's some women all the scribes that are having rape fantasies. But one thing, but there's two things about them.

Obviously, there's a distinction between reality and fiction here. These are not real life desires, but also very highly stylized. The aggressor is typically very handsome. There's some degree of mutual attraction to start with. And some ways, to some extent, anything else that fantasy that both men and women have, which is being so attracted that others lose control around you. And it may connect with notions of, playing

with notions of domination and submission. Honestly, of, you know, I could give you like a thousand papers on a lot of, I'm saying, I give you 10,000 papers on effect of money on happiness. When it comes to questions like, like, sexual desires and so on, the data is, for the most part, pretty poor. We just don't know that much. And I think the topics have been to move for a long time. I wish and so on. The data is, for the most part, pretty poor. We just don't know that much. And I think the topics have been to move for a long time. I wish there was more research into them. What is the efforts paradox?

Ah, the effort paradox is actually developed by the term came from a friend of mine, a Mickey inslet who's at University of Toronto not far from me. And the paradox goes like this, or C. Toronto, not far from me. And a paradox goes like this. Typically, creatures obey the law of least effort. And this shows that this is an animal psychology world for a long time. So if there's food in front of a dog, and a dog's hungry, it will go to the food. It won't walk around in circles around the food.

And it makes sense. If you're thirsty, a reach for glass of water, you won't move your hand and do figure eights around. Or when you take the least effort, you go the most direct path. And animals and humans avoid effort. So if a dog is hungry and there's two bones, and they want some bones equally, and one's close to it, and one's far away from it, go to one close to it.

Common sense. The paradox is sometimes is not true. So sometimes we seek out effort. And every day life is full of it. I mean, here's an entirely unsexy example. I do cross repuzzles. I sit around on my iPad and I do cross repuzzles and I try to spend some time trying to figure it out. I do not do it. I'm not that I attract any mates with my cross reposal skills because it's not really a made attracting kind of thing and V. I'm not even that good at it. But I enjoy it. It's kind of fun. And then, you know, and then and that's such a parent's. Why would I why would I exert effort and and with the opportunity possible, other things I should

be doing, just to do a project puzzle? And put aside people who trained for marathon, so try affrons. It makes it, if you're doing it, because you have a chance to become a world champion, well, there's a little like a logic to that, but the vast majority don't, they just do it in order to do it. And so the effort paradox is, why sometimes is effort attractive, as opposed to something which one avoids? And there's different answers.

One answer is what you were talking about before involving the feeling of mastery and accomplishment. Another answer connects to the feeling of flow. When this is the work of Mahali Jixant Meai, who sadly passed away a couple weeks ago, and he points out that there's a sort of special positive feeling, not exactly pleasure, but a feeling of satisfaction to be engaged in an activity at a level that you're not bored, but also you're not freaking out, you're not too anxious, it's right in between. The best definition of flow I've heard is you're in a state of flow if you just forget,

you lose track of time, you forget the eat, you get a pick up, you get this at school, this state of flow, and there's something to flow states which are immensely attractive to people. Though they're very hard to get, so he does these interviews and some people say they never have in their whole life because it requires effort and work to get to a flow state. And it's very easy to sit on the sofa and watch Netflix and eat corn chips, you know. Getting some rock climbing in are sustained musical practice or writing poetry or even a deep discussion or for a friend that could be tough. But that's what we find worth while. Are you familiar with Stephen Kotler's work? No, I'm not. Okay, so he is a researcher in the area of flow, but he comes at it from

a much more biological perspective. So what he's doing is he's trying to find the biological prerequisites that cause us to fall into flow. And he's got a book out that came out earlier this year called The Art of the Impossible. And it's a primer, a peak performance primer for how to get into flow. It's interesting that you said that you like to write early in the morning, because they've done studies and they've identified the particular type of brainwave patterns that you have when you're in flow, and his argument is that it is significantly easier to get yourself into flow if you are doing the thing that you required to be in flow for a short after waking as possible, because you're nearly there. I'm sure that you

have heard some of the stories. I think it was, was it Newton that used to go to sleep with ball bearings in his hand on a chair? And then as he finally dropped off, the ball bearings would fall out of his hand and fall on the floor. And that would be his little way to kickstart himself into a flow state because it got him into those brainwaves, switched off the default mode network,

allowed him to see different connections that he wouldn't have done usually. But the art of the impossible by Stephen Kotler with switched off the default mode network, allowed him to see different connections that he wouldn't have done usually. But the art of the impossible by Stephen Kotler is a really good primer for understanding flow states from a much more biological perspective. Really good. I'll check that out. I mean, I read Flow when I was young and man, my feeling reading the book, reading his

first popular book and that was Envy, He describes these rock climbers who spend hours and hours just lost in an activity or he's expert musicians or these dancers and it's just and you know, I would love to aspire to even close the life of flow he describes. And the instead of a morning seems right, my own sense is the first thing I do when I wake up is I make myself coffee. I also just fall back asleep, grab a headache. But before the coffee kicks in, there's this somewhat rousey state where you can just get lost in something.

It's like, you know, meditation for people who are a crap at meditation. Maybe you just find yourself just flowing into it and then, um, and so yeah, that sounds great. You know what I mean? The more you get of that, the better. Another thing that I found when I wake up, because I wake up to the same radio station every morning, which is classic FM in the UK, and when I wake up, the news always comes on for about two minutes. And if I let myself stay awake with the radio on with the alarm on for longer than two minutes, whatever the song is, the first song that they choose, that song is in my head. I shit you not

for the next three hours. It is fucking imprinted in there. It's like someone seared it into the back of my mind. And I'm so I'd love to speak. I'll just must email Stephen about it and find out what it is about the imprinting time that you have. First thing in the morning it is like nothing else it's like virgin fresh snow with a couple of footprints in it and I can't hear anything except for whatever that song was on a morning and that's it I'll hear it as I walk as I'm doing my morning walk it'll be to the rhythm of my feet on the floor. I'm like, oh my God, this is like being trapped inside of my own mind. It's crazy. It's a great metaphor. It's a something that when we wake up, it is just fresh, fresh snow. Sometimes you wake up and for the first, at least for me for the first, second, two seconds, I don't even know where I am. Sometimes you wake up and you're very more than waking up and you're maybe a cotton dream, you don't even know who you are. And then the day accumulates and then it piles up on you and and pretty soon by the end you're you're snow that you know that a whole elementary school is stomped all over. Okay it's a new theory is the way we need to sleep. Why is suffering important for meaning for life then? Yeah, so we've been talking about pleasure

and that's not all. So, here's the wrong way to think about it. I think the wrong way to think about it is, oh, I want a life of meaning. So, I want to suffer. You know, I want to run a marathon and I'm really hoping to get blisters and to get ill and to fail or whatever. It's not like that at all.

I don't think people court suffering in that sort of way. You might train for a marathon, you just really want to get better and run a marathon. But at the same time, people know that if it didn't have the possibility of failure and difficulty and struggle, it wouldn't be seen as meaningful. You don't want to fail, but on the other hand, the chance of failure has to be part and parcel of the thing. You and I are playing poker, and if I sit down and play poker, I want to win. Obviously.

But if I knew one was going to win, if failure was impossible, it wouldn't bother playing. It's too boring. You know, and there's just this insight, all the shows up all over the place, twilight zone episodes and Zen parables and everything. I'll tell you the Zen, my favorite one, Alan Watts is the guy who brought Zen to the UK or to the United States. I'm not sure anyway. Pretty scott. I don't know where he landed. Yes, yes, I don't know what he landed, but so he tells this story. And I remember this because my partner or watching Avengers Endgame and it came up at the beginning, he had a commercial for a bank. And I'm watching it.

And I said, wow, they had a voice over saying the story. And I said, what the hell? So a win-home in Google it. And the story is, imagine you file a fellow sleep and you found yourself in a lucid dream. You could dream whatever you want for 75 years. He said, well, you have so much fun. You do everything, head and stick blow out.

You wake up, you live your day, and then it happens again. And he said, sooner or later you say, well, this has not been a lot of fun, but it's getting a bit boring. I want to throw some struggle, some obstacles, some failure, some difficulty in it. He goes on, he talks about it, and he says, and if you think about it, maybe that's the life you're living now. The life you would have chosen, if you could choose any, maybe that's the life you're living now. You know, the life you would have chosen, you could choose any life. And all the difficulties and failures and disappointments, that's part of the best life.

And I think instinctively we appreciate that. We appreciate that. A life full of meaning is a life full of risk and struggle and pain. Can you remember the Twilight Zone story that you put in the book? Because that is awesome. You get all the good ideas from the Twilight Zone. This mobster, this thug, I think, a killer dies. And to his surprise, he's seemingly an enemy.

He's in like gorgeous hotel suite and everything. And he has a little angel by his side. And he says, you know, what is this? Well, you know, welcome to Afterlife. I said, wow, I'm hungry. I wish there was a feast in front of me. Boom, there's a feast in front of me. And he bets on sports and he always wins.

Beautiful women flock to him. And he just loves it. And he's stopped playing. He says, this is ridiculous. I can't play again. I can't. I'm going insane here. And finally, he says to his guy, he says, you know, I want to go to the other place. That's where I belong. And he says, this is the other place. This is hell. And hell is where you get everything you want. you get everything you want. I mean, it's kind of, it's a little bit twilight's, and I think hell wouldn't involve, you know, hot pokers

and being burnt in sulfur, and that sounds pretty bad too. But, but it's certainly not heaven. It's certainly not heaven. And I try to remind myself, you know, life contains a thousand disappointments, and for each one of you, I wish this wasn't happening. My book, Number One, and the bestseller was to snap my fingers. I would do that. But you got to realize, and as you become an ally, you realize it can't work that way.

It's this great paradox. You need the specter of failure and difficulty and struggle and disappointment. You know, and this shows up all over the place. It shows up. It sounds like I'm just kind of spouting stories, but it shows up. And they did this study of two million people, and they asked people what they're about their jobs, and then they asked them how meaningful is your job. And the most meaningful jobs are hard jobs. The most meaningful jobs being a member of the clergy, working as a medical professional of all different sources

meaningful, social worker, educator, and often these jobs are low status. They are often low pain, but they're meaningful because you're helping people and you're making a difference. Because it's tough. The countries that were the citizens say at their most meaningful, I mean, there's so much happiness research saying, what countries are happiest and answers the richest countries? The richest safest, best countries don't end up happy. No surprise at all. But the countries that have the most people say

to have the most meaning are the poorest countries. A meaningful life is positively correlated with low GDP, not high GDP, and with political turmoil and it's hard to make a living and you don't trust people around you. And I think there's different, different theories as to what's going on here. But one thing is that struggle and meaning are intertwined. And if I had to choose a rather live a life in a sort of prosperous country where things are going well, but there's some human needs that don't necessarily get scratched in a prosperous world. What was the least fulfilling job?

I think it was parking lot attendant. No one likes parking lot attendant. No one likes to like, you know, I should or worse jobs, but it does feel like, you know, it's hard to attract meaning from it. I mean, I'm going to get a whole zan here. It's one of those zan things to say to any activity, you know, scrubbing toilets, cleaning dishes and everything. In the hands of the right person can have meaning. There's a story that's probably a powerful, President John at Kennedy, turning NASA.

And he starts when there's a janitor sweeping in the corner and he says, you're saying, what do you do here? And the janitor says, I help put men on the moon. And you know, that's their stories of people who do, who do clean up in hospitals, who see their job, as they should see it as a job of dignity, where they're helping sick people. And then I've seen people, I have had three people

close to me quit a tenured professor jobs. And I'm thinking, this is a job of unlimited freedom, autonomy, pays pretty good, you know, and you get to pursue whatever you want. And each of the three of us said, I find nothing of value here. No meaning, no purpose. And so your mileage may vary.

What's the relationship between meaning and pleasure then? You can... They are separable. There are people who live the lives that they say are of great meaning. And they don't have much pleasure. And I'm the people who are... Who are... Who are...

Who are... Who are... Who are... Who are... Who are... Who are... Who are... Who are... Who are... who are well-described as a hedonist and say, a little life-great pleasure, but there's no meaning or purpose. But they tend to be correlated, actually. It's kind of good news. You might imagine you have to choose one or the other.

But if you ask people, how happy are you? And how much fun are you having? And you also ask them, how meaningful is your life? How much will it purposes your life? The answers will tend to correlate. There are people who are kind of high in both. Now, there's always trade-offs. This is one of the, this is one of the things about motivational pluralism. If, if, if motivational pluralism was wrong and all that mattered was hedonic pleasure, then, then life would be simple, just seek out hedonic pleasure. But you have to balance things.

You have to decide whether or not to, you know jump in the cool swimming pool or visit your sick aunt Or you know or practice the violin. You got these different priorities clashing with each other and People's differ in how they they established a balance There's an interesting conflict here between Dan Kahneman's Insights and Dan Gilbert's views on happiness. Can you go through that? Yeah.

Gilbert's a friend of mine and a huge help of the book, because he thinks my book is total nonsense. He thinks motivational pluralism is ridiculous. Heedness is the way to go. And he's like, it's been a whole time pushing me and it was as he wrote the book. There's no better person than Dan to be duking it out with as you try to make your way through. So here's the issue. And this is the insights of that economy, which is, when we say happiness or pleasure,

there's two very different things. So one thing is, wait to call experienced, experienced happiness. And the typical way to do this is you give somebody an iPhone and have it go off at random times there at a day. And when it goes off, they say, how happy they are. And so you have one and I have one and 500 other people have this. And then for each of us, we just sum up how happy we are from scale one to 10. Maybe whenever years goes off, you're an eight. Whenever mine goes off, I'm a four.

I'm average eight, I'm average four. You have more experienced happiness in your life than I do. But then there's something else we can do, which is we can just ask you, how happy are you? How satisfied are you with your life? Where does it scan on a scale of one to 10? If 10 is the perfect life and zero is life, not worth living, where are you?

People give you a number to that too. Maybe your number is seven, maybe my number is six. These numbers correlate. So your experience, happiness, and your remembered happiness are related, not surprising. And they both sound and respond to the same thing. So as your income goes up, they both go up. Diminishing returns, but they both go up.

But they're different. You could be high in one and low in another. You could say, I am living the best life. But most of the time in your life you're doing difficult, unpleasant things. So you're low in that. Or you could say, you could live this, you know, this orgy of fun all the time you're having tremendous time.

And then I sit and I ask you, so what do you think of your life? And you say, man, my life sucks. You know, I'm having a lot of pleasure, but I'm not adding anything to one of the parasite. I'm a loser if you're really sad. And then you go back to your sex and your drugs and your rock and roll, and you're really happy. So the question is, which one should we maximize? If you choose.

And Conanman says, you should maximize your remembered happiness, your judgment. That's what people want to do. People don't just want a party and have a good time. They want to be thinking they're living a worthwhile valuable life. Dan Gilbert says, you should maximize the day-to-day stuff, your day-to-day experience. If you spend 95% of your time having a really good time, and then 5% of the time I ask you, so how's your life? And you say, oh, my life is disappointing. And it sucks.

Well, I'm balanced. You're way ahead of the game. Don't take too seriously. You're a contemplative perspective. And I'm more on Danny Conn on the side, but because I'm not a heat miss. I think there's a real, it me or somebody I loved, lived their life, say, totally bullet stud on ear on.

And suppose they could do it and such, we had no side effects. They just were just engrueling with the light the whole time. I'd say, man, what a waste. That's not a good life. That's a crap life. You know, do you remember the example from Robert Nosec of the experience machine? This is a great example where he asked people, I could, you know, here's the deal.

Got a machine here. You lie down, I plug you into the machine, and you will experience those life of extraordinary pleasure and satisfaction. For the rest of your life, for the rest of your natural life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, your life, life, your life, your life, your life, your life, life, your life, life, your life, life, your life, natural life, your life, your life, your tube's giving you food, and you'll have this best-ream member. Do you wanna do that?

And Nosec says, absolutely not. Says, I don't wanna think I fell in love. I wanna fall in love. I don't wanna think I climb out to everyone. I wanna climb out of it. I wanna make a difference in the world. And many people including me wouldn't go into the machine even though we would we get less pleasure.

Now I got to admit there's some people who say yeah plug me in man, I would but I think most of us wouldn't, would you? No, I wouldn't. I thought about this long and hard. One of the things that I've got in my head. So the Dan Gilbert thought experiment, he says, if you are contemplating for 5% of your life and you are reminded of the fact that you've lived it in a swimming pool for ages and you're going to feel bad, then you've got 95% that's good. This seems to be a selection effect for the sort of people typically that I associate with hedonists, the people who are less ruminative, the ones that do less contemplation, the ones that are less introspective, whereas the people that I know who are more introspective seem to be more

concerned with meaning. Now, perhaps that's the outcome. They have managed to find a mode of attaining meaning over pleasure because pleasure would be reflected on more, which would not give them an actual sense of being well-lived. Have you considered that? If you're right, it's solved. Everybody gets what they want. The hedonist doesn't reflect at all and lives a life of pleasure. The somebody who focuses on meaning and purpose wouldn't enjoy all that time in a pool anyway

because there would be two busy thinking of a meaning of purpose, so then they get what they want. But I think that's clever. I like that. You can't make the problem go away. So here's one from Danny Connitz. Here's one of Danny Connitz. It turns out that you have a really fun one week vacation. You have a really fun two week vacation.

And later on I asked you, how was your vacation? How do you remember? And you would think if we were in some way rational and our remembered happiness was based on the sum of experience that being us. You would think that you would remember the second the two-week one is twice as good. It's the first one we want because it's twice as much fun. But we don't say it was nice vacation man. It was good. It's what he calls duration neglect. Same for bad experiences. You know, I've sometimes been on a plane with, you know, no Wi-Fi and I forgot to bring a book and I'm uncomfortable. I'm in the middle

seat and every night that. And eight hours is twice as bad as four hours. But you're back at the hotel. All you remember was that flight sucked and it doesn't suck twice as much. So you're back at the hotel, all you remember was that flight sucked, and it doesn't suck twice as much. So again, you have the question of what the maximum is. So some people say, wow, that means I should take short vacations because I'm going to remember them the same anyway. And other people say, are you crazy? Who cares what you remember? It's what you experience. Hmm. The interesting thing here, I thought about the remembering and the experiencing self a lot. And I came to the perhaps incorrect conclusion that because the remembering self lasts for

far longer than the experiencing self, that optimizing for the remembering self makes sense, especially when you're younger. So there's actually an argument to be made that you should become more hedonic as you get toward old age. As a cause you run out of time to reflect. Precisely. If I have another six months to go, I shouldn't be piling up good memories. Everybody knows this. Everyone knows this intrinsically. What would you do if it was your

last day in earth? Oh, I'd steal a car and I'd get in an airplane and I'd do it this thing. What is that? Because you're going to sacrifice suffering and meaning in place of pleasure. So everyone intrinsically understands this. But yeah, I think certainly for me with my constitution, I would just optimize as much as possible for living a life that when remembered, it feels like a life that was well lived. But I wonder whether this, I wonder whether I'm missing something there. I wonder whether...

No. Well, here's what Dan Gilbert would say you're missing, which is there are some experiences we go back over and over and over again, and we savor them. And a matter of time we spend savoring is actually longer than experience itself. Yes. You know, sometimes, I don't know,

I've like done things that, you know, this is so arduous and unpleasant, but I've looked at them so often in my head, I spend more time looking at them than experience them. And then it's, you even have to say, heed and a, everybody's happy, because as he hedonist, it's the remembered self you're maximizing.

But then there's something like the vacation. So they have a vacation you took two years ago. Maybe think about it a few times, but you don't spend a week of your life thinking about that vacation you took two years ago. Some experiences are barely referred back to them. And then somebody like Dan Gilbert would say, it's a mistake to try to maximize how to remember as opposed to how they're experienced. Then you get into, and I'm sure you're aware of these examples, these true

freaking paradoxes. And this is why they gave kind of a Nobel Prize because things like this. So, there's the ones involving pain where the, he actually did this for real-world colonoscopies back when they were more painful. So, you take one that's excruciatingly painful and you stop it and have to people get that. The other half get the same amount of pain excruciatingly painful and you stop it. Then, some more mild pain. And then you ask them later to two groups saying, which experience was worse, either within group in some cases, between group and other ones.

And what you find is that the experiences which had more total pain are remembered more positively than the experiences that had less total pain, because they ended on a better note, and we tend to remember endings. It's like, you know, it suggests that when you go to a dentist, and it's really freaking painful, and says, okay, we're done, you should say,

Doc, could you like poke me just a bit, so I'll remember it better? And this is crazy. I remember reading something off the back of that. It might have been written by Kanaman or someone just interpreting his work, saying, one of the most compassionate things that you can do for your child,

the first time that they go to the dentist is to do exactly that, to ask them to extend the procedure just a little bit to try and down-regulate the emotional trauma. But what's coming through in all of this is that we're not rational creatures and every experience, whether it be to do with meaning, morality, pain, pleasure, whatever, all of it is mediated by our interpretation of it and then our interpretation of our interpretation

of it, both in the moment and after the event. And this framing response, the fact that we are at the mercy of what we thought happened and the story that we tell ourselves about it, that's the second order challenge that I think a lot of people have to get past. It's not just what happened to you, it's what you tell yourself about what happened to you. That's the difference that you were talking about earlier on between the difference between being homeless and going camping ostensibly isn't all that much, but one of them you chose to do it, the other one you have to do it. I agree with every word of that except for one word. I'm not sure it's not rational. I'm not sure there's some cases where something is irrational. If it takes you away from your goals, if it violates axioms of logic,

if it's internally inconsistent, the fact that how you see something affects how you experience it. It seems to me neither rational nor irrational in itself, it's just a way of doing it. You know, and like one of my interests is the pleasures we get from art and our pleasures in general. If you're looking at a face of somebody you love, they look more attractive than they look at a face of a stranger, even with the same face. The people you love grow to look more attractive. It's not just that you say you love them more, they just honestly look more attractive to you.

Is that irrational? Well, I don't know. If there was like a rule saying that judgment of attractiveness has to be made on bone structure and symmetry and everything that, yeah, and then you messed up. But who made that rule? If I say that my kids are, looks, is the best looking art in the world, I guess that sounds kind of extreme. But if I enjoy art more, if I knew it was made by my kid, then by a stranger, or by Picasso, then by a fortress. Again, it seems to be neither rational nor irrational. It's just a way in which we enjoy things. We focus on contrast, we focus on context,

fasting feels differently. Camping is a wonder where it is because I hate camping and I think you just summed up exactly why camping because I can't I can't get the mental switch. I'm always feel like I'm in a greatly unfortunate part of my life where I've lost my house. So it's sad. Talking about wealth and the relationship between wealth and meaning and happiness and satisfaction. What's the true red pill story about the relationship between wealth and happiness? Because I didn't realize that there was another element to the after a particular level your happiness doesn't increase any more story. It's so it used to be and soon enough it used to be Even when I taught intro psych many years ago. I used to say isn't it amazing?

Money is unconnected to happiness, which is what people believe and then it turns out no, that's not true More money. You have the happier you are both as individuals and also countries richer countries have happier people And if you think about it, it's kind of weird we could have ever imagined it would be otherwise. Money, buy jewels or to things that buys you in a country like the United States, it helps it buys you health, it buys you and everywhere it buys you security, safety, travel, time with friends, freedom from exploitation, cool stuff. It's just, it's a lot of things to be said for money. But then the story was that it tops out at a certain amount. And I think in the United States, when the study was done, it was about $80,000 a year.

And then more money doesn't help. And that would be like maybe $120,000 right now. And then more studies started to come in. And it's by no means clear it's true. There were studies finding that millionaires are happier than people of half a million and even the study finding that people at a level of over ten million dollars are happy and people have who have between one and ten million dollars. The difference is not huge. I mean, it makes sense that money would match that. The between making 20,000 and 40,000 is enormous.

The different being making, you know, 520,000, 540,000 is tiny. The diminishing return is kind of need to do on a log scale. But still, there's reason to believe that the more money you get to have here, you are all the way up as far up as we can measure it. And I think part of this is because that money is tied to status. And status makes us happy. You know, if you have 100 million and I have 50 million and we both know this, you might be happier. You might just say, man, I got more money in this guy. Even though it might be hard to think of anything tangible you could do that I can't do.

I was talking about universal basic income with a behavioral geneticist called Catherine Page Harden. And she's great. I really, really enjoyed that conversation with her. But I put to her, the one of the challenges around her proposed safety net for people that they shouldn't fall below with regards to income because there is a minimum level of humanness that everybody is allowed to have. My argument was, and this was something

that I hadn't thought of before, because we are inherently state of seeking creatures, I don't think that there is a level of UBI that will make people satisfied. I think that you get state of seeking immediately from everybody. And as soon as you see the person that decides to work as well as get UBI or work instead of get UBI gets more than you, immediately until you've completely flattened that curve, there is an argument to be made that no one's going to be happy until we have everybody at whatever it is, number 7,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Yes, and and somewhere I think it's a good thing. So Put aside the details of UVI because there's a lot of debate over this is how to do it But imagine UVI or any sort of excellent safety net welfare system

The argument there is people will come out of it, you know Well-fed and get medical care and have housing. They don't have to go camping They just and and everything is all the basic needs are satisfied, your children are safe, and that's terrific. We'll make them happy, certainly happier than if they're dying of an untreated infection. But happy, I don't know, I think a lot of happiness is tied into status and also tied into accomplishment in ways which crosscut it. You know, I would rather be, I have a guest at somebody who wanted Nobel Prize in literature,

even if she doesn't make that much money, is a lot happier and satisfied than some hedge fund manager. But you're right, money itself will not satisfy your basic needs, and it's plainly a plus, but there's more. And the problem with status, by the way, which is that it's inherently zero sum. It gets complicated. The only thing that makes them, so if you're at the top, I'm not at the top.

And somebody got to be at the bottom. The only thing that that ameliorates that concern, which is kind of a like, and it's a position that will will concern whose policy expert pointed out, though I think he now doesn't believe it, is that one of the good things about capitalism is that there could be a whole lot of status hierarchies. So maybe you make more money than me, but my kids are better looking.

Maybe you're in better shape, but check out all the Pokemon cards I've collected. You know, and so in a good world, any smell can find a place where they get, at least they do fair enough to get respect. And none of very low of this has to do money in it. Money will satisfy the basic needs, but it's nice to have a world. And I don't think I'm disagreeing with Paige Harden here. Nice to have a world where the very, the very uneven distribution of gifts

that people possess is set up so that everybody has a chance to do pretty well with some domain or another. Yeah, it was an interesting conversation. I really, really enjoyed. I found her fascinating because she comes at behavioral genetics, which the better or worse is a subject area that has been adopted by people that are more right-leaning. And she has quite a left-leaning perspective about how she wants the country to be run and so on and so forth. One of the things that I realized was that a lot of the problems that she was highlighting could just be fixed by having a better government. So for instance, she brought up healthcare and she said that healthcare should be available to all, to make it available to all you need to have sufficient money in UBI so that people can pay for their healthcare.

Now, well, we fix that problem in the UK and we don't have UBI. We've just nationalized healthcare. So then if you can nationalize a bunch of other things, and you end up with, everyone's got a soup kitchen that delivers direct to their door through some fancy teleporting technology in a hundred years time, and you can just teleport food into everyone's houses, then you go, okay, there could be a point

where you get to where you don't need UBI, and all of her requirements for this minimum level of humaneness is met, but you still have this desire for status, and it's inherently going to be unfulfilling. I don't think that UBI can counter against status. And as you said as well, this desire for accomplishment and to feel like you're actually achieving something. This is the thing that people always bring up that you spend all of this time on the couch and you just think that the people who are no longer need to work, they're going to go out into the fields and

start writing poetry. I think that there is... I know that the people who are no longer need to work, they're going to go out into the fields and start writing poetry. I think that there is, I know that the helplessness and the sense of pointlessness is potentially going to come in. Some people find even from a shitty job they find meaning. I've got friends that are nurses and doctors and they will self describe their jobs as shitty. They'll tell me they're doing a 70 hour week and they'll hate it, but they get a huge amount of meaning from it. So yeah, it's a... It's an interesting blend. You talked about something that I thought was quite interesting. It's all the role of sacrifice. What is the place of sacrifice? Why does it play a role here? You think of in a religious context?

No, in the book. using even a religious context or so I have a discussion of sacrifice in the context of religion and in the context and again I mean when I talk about it I get into a topic you and I haven't discussed yet which is what do you do with unchosen suffering? So right now we've been just talking about the trade-offs people give, the way people choose in order to get pleasure, the way people choice the people make in order to get meaning, and morality and purpose. But often a lot of suffering we have in life is unchosen. And there I'm actually a lot less optimistic.

I'm not one of these people who think, oh, chosen bad stuff happens to you, you get stronger, you get more resilient, you do post-traumatic growth. I don't deny this happens some other time, but it is by far not a regular psychological rule. We tend to be more resilient than we think we are. But growth, I'm skeptical about it.

And then you get frameworks where we try to explain this. We try to make sense of things. Some people think that we've invented religion because we want to figure out where the universe came from, where animals came from, and natural phenomena. But I don't think we care that much about those things. Sometimes scientists scholars do, but we care deeply about why we suffer. And why is it you and not me or me, or not you? Why did this person die and not that person?

And religion provides a framework, and a lot of religious rituals and religious activities are attempts to manipulate the laws of faith. This includes sacrifice and includes a lot of chosen suffering with the context of religion where you're trying to sort of take away the randomness from the world. Do you want to lend a cohesive narrative that explains why something's happened? Yeah, and you know, so one narrative is, you know, everything happens for a reason. That's not a great narrative, you're saying there is a narrative.

And I think I've done actually some research with this wonderful person, Konika Bannerji, who's my student. And we ask people to remember significant events the last couple of years where, you know, good events like weddings, children being born, bad events like death of loved ones. And then we ask them, is there an narrative? Does that happen for recent?

It happens to send you a message. And what we find is religious people are much more likely than 80s to say yes. But even atheists will often say yes to this, will often see a narrative behind it. And of course, religion provides a narrative. It wasn't random. God is testing you. You are reliving the suffering of Christ. God, we ignore God when He whispers, but He comes and loud and clear when we suffer. And it is a way of calling His attention, calling our attention, and so

on and so forth. It's what, to go back to Dan Gilbert, part of what we call a psychological immune system, which is we're often much better than we think we are at dealing with bad stuff because we're very quick to tell a story in which it actually isn't bad. But I gotta say, I actually think, you know, it happens for a reason it's kind of a, often a very corrosive, very bad thing to believe. I think it can reassure us,

but it could also lead us to be cruel to others. You have cancer. Man happens for a reason. What do you do to deserve that? Or maybe it'll make you grow. Good news, pal. You know, it leads to, I think we have to acknowledge between adults that often the best responses, man, that's such a bad shitty luck.

I'm so sorry. And it also leads to sort of passivity where there's a whole lot of suffering in the world. And to say that suffering is there for a reason, its God's will is the recipe for doing nothing. There's a part of me that feels a little bit uncomfortable when someone goes through something and they look back on it and say that this happened

for a reason because look at the position that I'm in now. And the reason that I don't like it when people give those explanations is it takes away the agency and the glory from what they did to turn that bad situation into the good one that they're now in. You know, you say that this thing happened. You got into a car car, everybody, everybody that got into a really bad car wreck three years ago. And now he's in this awesome design position at Apple and he's got all of this stuff. And he's never said that, but I could imagine in a different world, somebody that said,

you know, look at, look at where this particular accident got me to. And now I'm in this amazing situation. I'm working for Apple and I've got my strength back and I'm running and I'm training. I'm doing this stuff. Well, what's the difference between that caused you to be in this situation and you overcame that situation to now have this life that you're so happy about leading? I agree. That sort of narrative takes the credit away from the person who, you know, to think, to think that I got this car accident and that catapulted me into my career. It strips you of the credit you'd serve for the fact that that no, you ended up having to struggle and having to recover.

having to struggle and having to recover. But so that in one way, it's an awful thing for somebody to say, on the other hand, if you don't say something like that, it forces you to confront the terrible randomness of life, which is just freaking terrible. I mean, anybody you love could be snatched away in a second. No.

Anytime you're phone rings, it would be the worst news in the world. No. Anytime your phone rings, it would be to worse news in the world. And if there's no narrative, that's what we're stuck with. Have you heard of compensatory control? I can guess what it is, but make me not guess. I saw this a year ago. So it's Matthew Syed, he wrote a piece in the Times, why conspiracy theories and demagogues spread in times of worry and uncertainty. Psychologists have conducted experiments to shed light on why people lose or at least suspend rationality. One experiment asked people to imagine going to

a doctor to hear an uncertain medical diagnosis, such people were significantly more likely to express the belief that God was in control of their lives. Another asked participants to imagine a time of deep uncertainty when they feed for their jobs or the health of their children. They were far more likely to see a pattern in meaningless static or to infer that two random events were connected. This is such a common finding that psychologists have given it a name, compensate Re-control. When uncertain, when randomness upon our lives, we respond

by reintroducing order in some way. Superstitions and conspiracy theory speak to this need. It is not enough to accept that important events are shaped by random forces. This is why it makes much more sense to believe that our lives are threatened by the grand plan of some malign scientist than the chance mutation of a silly little microbe? Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. That rings true. And it explains, you know, what would otherwise be paradoxical, which is after terrible things happen, you would imagine people to band in their faith.

You know, if you believe in a loving God protecting you and then, you know, you lose family the 9-11 or the pandemic or whatever. Just kind of makes sense to say, well, I'm going to lower to priors on that belief of a loving, protective God. It's exactly the opposite. Bad things happen and people believe strengthens. And I think it is a desire for control, for an narrative and a more of a willingness of propensity to see it.

And then sometimes you get, and I think some of this is Adam Golancki's work, you get a sort of hoping to fiddle with things, hoping to use karma productively. So in some studies, before somebody is about to go through discover whether or not they have an illness or before they go to apply for a job, they're more likely to donate to charity. Kind of thinking at some level, maybe not even consciously that, well, this will tip the goods, you know, this will get the DEU's attention and his love will shine upon me and give me good fortune.

And that, you know, you know, you're talking about, we push back and forth about rational, irrational. I think a lot of that's fairly irrational, but it is a powerful tendency. Are there any stories from the book that we your favorites that we haven't touched on? Oh gosh, we had a lot of them. I think we hit him out. I love the fact that over and over again, the same things converge. Victor Frankl and... When we talk about Victor Frankl, you and I?

Nope, not yet. So, we'll end with that then, because this is my subtitle, The Search for Meaning, is a shout out to his book, Man Search for Meaning. So he was a Jew in Austria, was a psychiatrist who worked with suicide, suicidal adolescence. And when Hitler came to power, he couldn't left, but he didn't, his elderly parents were there and they couldn't leave. And he ended up getting swooped up and caught in concentration camps in a duck out on Auschwitz and He was always a scientist and he asked himself the question

What distinguishes the people who? Kill themselves or give up they just stop eating or they actively kill it They run you know, they they make a run for it. No, and they to be shot and so on. From those who are resilient and those who hold on. And he said, it's not like cheerfulness or any obvious personality fate. It's within that evil's meaning. And that you have a reason to live, you know, some sort of quote that those who find a why in life can bear with almost anyhow. And I feel this jibes well will fill out of the way people are thinking about it in a way I sort of build my book around it.

The story is it Victor Frankl that talks about the stories of when they were made to move bags of wet salt or sand from one side of the encampment to the other and then once they had done they were just told to move it back. Is that from... I don't remember that story. I know that the story that I'm pulling it from is some Jewish concentration camp in World War II. And the point was that there was no inherent meaning

in the work, because once you'd moved it, it was moved back. And I'm not the most DIY handyman person in the world. I'm waiting for whatever switch my dad has to drop in the back of my head, but my business partner's opening a bar in Newcastle where I live, and I offered my time useless as it is

to say, look, I will come and paint walls and clean up and sand things and do whatever. And as I was doing it, I haven't done work like this for a long time, two full days of manual labor, of sanding concrete walls to give them a nice shine or cleaning stuff up or whatever it might be. And upon doing that, I reflected on the work of Jewish concentration camp prisoners being made to do something that is so pointless, because even at the end of the day of this work that was pretty mind-numbing, end of the day of this work that was

pretty mind-numbing, apart from the fact I had some good podcasts on, I was able to look at this wall and say that's the fucking, that's the back wall of this bar and it looks, it looks really quite nice actually and I've, I didn't paint it and I didn't plaster it and I didn't do any of the other stuff but I had a tiny little bit of a contribution and now every time that I go into this bar, I'll be able to look at that wall and think, I fucking, I did that for a day and a half. You helped put a man on the moon. I helped open a bar, yeah exactly. Yeah.

We were looking at the British cover, the UK cover is a book, it's self-thank you, it's a gorgeous, gorgeous cover. But the American cover, I'll send you a picture, is different. And it is a picture of a Cicifus, the famous myth. And the myth is the story of time of the concentration camps of someone condemned to roll a boulder up the hill. And before guests to the top of the rolls now, and Rinssen repeat for eternity.

And meaning requires an endpoint. You don't have to make it to the endpoint. Your work would be satisfying even if the bar was shuttered halfway through. But you have to be working towards the endpoint. You have to be working towards a goal. And without that, you know, work ceases to be satisfying and just becomes misery. If you were going to apply the sweet spot, if you were going to do applied sweet spot,

are there any takeaways that you think should inform people of how they live or view their lives or is it affected the way that you look at yours at all? I'm not a take away kind of guy for this. The book is really honestly, it's an exploration of why we do what we do and less so talent. My last book about empathy was more in your face and telling people to do stuff and I just want to discuss that. However, yeah, I've become more appreciative of flow. I want to read the book, you recommended, of getting flow. And I've also became more familiar with the literature suggesting that regardless of whether evenness and pleasure happiness is right goal. Seeking pleasure happiness seems to be kind of a dead end. You know, there's a strong relationship between people who think seeking happiness is very important and people will end up depressed and anxious and very unhappy. I think happiness and

pleasure is a goal but it's the kind of goal you get while you're doing other things. So, working on a book has made me appreciate more the parts of my life that aren't that much fun, but are directed towards a purpose in the book. I love it. Paul Bloom, ladies and gentlemen, the sweet spot, suffering pleasure, and the key to a good life will be linked in these show notes below. And if people want to harass you on the internet, where should they go? I should probably hit me up on Twitter. I'm still Paul Blum at Yale.

Paul Blum at Yale. Paul Blum at Toronto. Yeah, but I lose my blue check mark if I change the Twitter app. So, and on my webpage, Paul Blum.net. Amazing. Thanks Paul. Thanks, this has been tons of fun.

Thank you.