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to say that I read your base and I are working on the third season of absolutely mental. So if you want to catch up with the first two, you can do that over it absolutely mental dot com, and I spent a lot of fun. Ok today, speaking with Paul bloom Paul, I thank holds the record for most appearances on the spot cast. I have lost count but spent many times he is now a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and remains a emeritus professor of psychology. Yale is research, focuses on the second Jim morality, identity. and pleasure he has received, words and honours, including the million dollar Klaus Trade Jacobs, research price is written for nature and science in the New York Times. The new Yorker, the Atlantic.

And is the author or editor of eight books, most recently, the sweet spot, the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning and a very fun book which we discuss in part, We talk about the role that pain and suffering playin living a good life. We discuss the connection between chosen, suffering and meaning they research of Dan Economy on well being. We talk about the possible integrating the experience gained in remembering selves that common differentiated were discussed, moral motivations, the effect of parenthood, unhappiness on chosen suffering day,

symmetry between loss and gain. Robert Nosey Ex experienced machine thought experiment the value of pleasure, effective, altruism value in the future. More than the past the power of contrast, false ideals of happiness Paulie Emory money and status, the role of the imagination, boredom the power of apology and other topics. Anyway, as many of you know, trying to sort out what it means However, good life is one of my core interests and given the nature of the topic, It's probably one of yours and I'll bring you Paul bloom. I am here with Paul bloom Paul thanks for joining again, hey thanks for having back them. So you have

This habit of writing very interesting books on topics that term her sort of hiding in plain sight. The last book, which I am I'm sure we discussed a measure, was on our last podcast completed several in that period, but your ear last book against empathy for brought the dark side of of empathy. At least empathy is emotional contagion into focus and, while that something that it seems like many people should have noticed. Before you wrote a book about it. You're deciding ten focus on at full length on it really brought out into the conversation and I would counter current book to have a similar property here, there's through an open secret component of these topics, because it's not their totally unobserved. I think of many people know much of what you are focusing.

on here, but they don't know they know it and they certainly don't have never had a chance to see it in the context of current research on the mind. So, there's really a pleasure in this new book is the sweet spot, the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning and I'll. Let you summarize your thesis, thereby We jump into it, what it, what is the sweet spot? First, thank you, I'm thanks for having on and we we did talk about against empathy in some way you could put these books and sort of a pair of enough anomalous claims against embassy in favour of suffering. This is kind of a different sort of up against empathy was kind of pugnacious saying that you know that the way we ve been doing it is wrong. We should do morality. Differently This is more of an exploration of people's curious appetites and then just missed a careful look at what we like.

the case that when I started writing this book, I was just preoccupied of certain puzzles, which is why do people get pleasure from certain forms of controlled suffering? Why do we take hot bath? Go to saunas, you know to martial arts run marathons, go to scary movies, to go to listen to sad songs, and I was really interesting. The role of suffering for pleasure and I was going to call about the pleasure of suffering but as a sort of got into it more and more, I realize that some suffering is actually not in the service of pleasure, but in the service of meaning and purpose, and so I ended up you know

These are two books in one the first party of pleasure. The second part deals with suffering as part of a good life and in the course of writing this, in which was a lot of it, was a fun book to ripen course of reading this, I sort of settled on a claim which is at the core of the book. Would you come motivational pluralism, which is that we're after what, after many things, we would you want pleasure, you know it's a hot day would like a cool drink, but we also wants meaning and purpose. We want morality. So that's. Why truth soon, as you want beauty It tries to put this together through the lens of chosen suffering. He also is the so interesting because it is one of those topics that term the fact that there's so much too

city of opinion on what constitutes a good life, is pretty surprising, given that the answer to this question is probably the most important answer we can ever find right, amended is nothing more tragic than a life misappropriated and dumb. It's a little bit like, perhaps even more surprising, because as a much simpler question, the fact of theirs diversity of opinion or bring a basic confusion about what constitutes a good diet, is also surprising that we women on this earth for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of them thousands of years in in their current form. But we certainly had a few centuries to look at it carefully and were still confused about what we should be putting in our mouths on a daily basis and were even more uncertain about the recipe for a truly good life.

soil is allowed to consider here I met some of the problems or definitional. Its members should jump into that part first, that use the semantics of it, because we have words like pleasure. Satisfaction and meaning and happiness well being flourishing you'd imo near an end obviously these are- is- are overlapping concepts. Jim started off with some clarification on terminology yeah in any enough. For each of these words, there's a lot of debate about people use it used the words in different ways: happy

as an authority, a sleek mean very different things. Meaning is notoriously very vague and I try to make it less vague when I talk about it, but in all the start of pleasure, so citizen intuitive sense pleasures. What makes us go our pleasure. His is my way of seeing a short term experience that we like that we say, bring us more of it and you contrasted with suffering or pay. you know pain is the physical part of it, but also you no shame humiliation, boredom anxiety, disappointment and you would think they're total opposites. You would think you know, and in fact you would think that you want the pleasure and you void suffering, but if the very interesting fact about people that experience places that are normally painful. That normally could bring you suffering in difficulty. In all sorts of ways are what we sometimes

want- and sometimes we want them, because there in the service of pleasure, like bs em, I talk a bit about that or rigorous exercise, which is difficult. In fact, it's supposed to be difficult. It was Easy would be the point as well as sort of a longer life projects that we take on, and we say this is no. We know this is going to be hard, but if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't matter- and in this brings us to the definition of meaning which is no- and I'm not taking this from a philosophical point of you just try to do this a priori. If you ask people, what's the meaningful experience, we ask people how meaningful is your life? The answer coherent, coherent question, and so we can look to see what they're they're talking about and they seem to be talking about experience projects that are difficult to take a lot of time and involves struggle and doubt

anne and uncertainty. They involve suffering of different sorts and if it didn't involve suffering, it wouldn't be meaningful here that one of the main problems here is that. people are on while narrators to their own adventure. Here too degree, were always in the presence of an unreliable narrator or at least a potentially unreliable narrator in several respects issue. That is the fact that my people really, maybe all of us don't what were missing Rainman as the end certain experiences we have that we like that, we keep gravitating toward and invariably their opportunity cost associated with each of those and we don't know how much better life would be if we had slightly different priorities, were or even vastly different priorities, so, even even in satisfaction

of our desires, even what we, engine are noblest desires, even though you, even in those days or weeks where we're living exactly as we feel we should begin again. We don't we just don't know what you know, how much greener the grasses on the side of the fence that we can see, and then you add to that all of the failures of of memory and the problems in integrating man Murray, with eight an evaluation of just what you know, how happiness sir or wellbeing or the absence of suffering is accruing, and this goes to the famous issue that Dan Economy and ran into in his research on the experiencing versus the remembering self, maybe one summarised ad and we can get into a good. I think you and I have a different. I don't think you know

I agree with Danny in his view of it, but here here perhaps remind us, Sir, what he thought he figured out there, yeah. We could talk a lot about a general idea. We could be wrong, we could, we could say something meaningful, invaluable and worthwhile and just be deluding ourselves and and just before we get the damages,

One point out that my argument is both chosen suffering and choose. The suffering is a very different thing I know is fresh in my mind because I am, I wrote it ever excerpt in my book in the Wall Street Journal when they got an email from somebody who was furious. I live island, chronic pain who the hell are you to tell me this is this is valid, was part of a good life. You know screw you and very angry, and I pointed out in a response. They look. I'm not I'm very care, I'm not talking about an chosen suffering, chronic pain, your child dies ever horrible illness. Your husband's down you gotta salted, those are suffered death suffering of quite a different sort, but at the same time and building on what you're saying we tell stories about that, we are very big story tellers and is a very natural narrative to say this happens for a reason. This made me a better person.

and I know, she's kind of sceptical about those stories. There's a whole letters and post traumatic growth, which finds that people often say after a horrible thing, I'm better I'm stronger and more resilient and kinder, but it turns out when you look closely there's not much evidence for real change is more of a story we tell ourselves. the sailors. What let's get it accept that some? Then it s important to us to explore table the yellow, unsought suffering until we deal with the other requisite of happy at her oh yeah, yeah economy on the experience experiencing it. Membrane cell continents, the coolest soldiers Danny Common, Danny R R Nobel laureate in psychology and in a well deserved, Technically and your, but a psychologist by Nobel Laureate and economics, which is the only thing he could not guess, qualified and- and somebody will,

Japan is that economics isn't a real Nobel prize. Rounders can have still clear that that ugly debate I'll give it to them for the peace prize added and so did earlier. That, too, is an embarrassment. Now woke he will keep chemistry, physics, somebody's literature, the economist and some lovely studies on our perception of our memories of experiences, and he points out. There is a difference between what you get when you weigh the actual pleasure and pain you feel versus how you recall it. So one of his time Things is what he calls to Rayshun neglect. You have a miserable for our flight. We have nothing to do and you're going crazy with boredom versus an eight hour flight, which is just as boring and just isn't pleasant. You think the second one is twice as bad: is twice as bad unpleasant, but he remembered him about the same. You know a wonderful to a vacation in one for one week, vacation at home, it doesnt matter. One was twice as long. You remember it the same

how you get to the really weird part, which is when assessing the the quality of experience, as we tend to judge the peaks and the end new and supplemented some really amazing study, seated the both in the lab and also people experiencing call and ask a business than a while ago, philosophies rashly quite painful, so he gives people a painful experience that ends on a very painful part and then stops, and so you know I didn't use another group exactly the same experience ending on exactly the same, hiding the pain we had the mild pan. The second one. We have more pains, name payments, the first one plus the more. Then he ask people. What are you prefer? The peoples of the second one was much better

because it ended on a more pleasant, no less let alone for now, and it leads to the bizarre fact that if you are having a painful dental operation and then I just pay ends in them, That's fine, you're done. Could go home, you say: could you give me a little bit a mile paints? I remember this better assist perverse here and Of overall continent says you're judgments of your data day, pleasure and pain. He could do this in a different way by giving people an Iphone after beeps at random times, we will say how happy they are. Our sad day are will differ from your remember judgment, of what kind of life you live and then there's a big debate in psychology in philosophy to which is what do you want to maximize? Do you want to maximize the sum total of pleasure he having life? or do you want to maximize how, when you look back on your life, you experience at common, famously says

remembered happiness, is what should count the server is, as is what people really take seriously what other people, like my friend, Angiogenesis Gilbert experience that cancer Enzo, Danny, famously decided that you really can reconcile these two different modes. Did that the person your tongue into when you're, asking someone about their life is always thee. The remembering self was making a global judgment about how good the vacation was or how good life is, how Mina, how satisfied how meaningful and then you when you compare that to the experience sampling mode of the personal, just gives a quick rating of their level of well being at random points during the day when you give them an app to do. That is just the two totally different measures. The way Danny Fraser at one point with me was that term what people really want me in the end, we have that the way people.

Go about their lives so as to live the most meaningful satisfying lives. Is that what what they want are good future Memories, you want to live in such a way, so that when we ask you in the future, how happy were you with the last year decade, life that person says it was. I wouldn't change a thing: right, even though there is just one moment in time and dumb. I've never bought this analysis and I not not denying his findings. I think this seems clearly true of us empirically that there's a distinction here, but I think something close to what Dan Gilbert imagines. should be possible. They should be able to just some the area under the curve, recognising that the the remembering self, is none other than the experience in in one of

her her modes or one of his moments and adjust its different in that it has a different salience and it is what always comes online when you ask a certain kind of question for a person, and the crucial bit to integrate is at the answer that you're able to give to that question. Whether Buena, prompted by someone like on or just to yourself it when you wake up at four in the morning and your thinking about your life that ability to answer that your satisfied or that you wouldn't change a thing, has further effects on the rest, your experience ray is not truly an isolated moment. It has it matters that whenever you find yourself in conversation with some one and they say also has a guy. and how's your life has your family that that conversation feels a certain way and has It changes your status or perceived status. This sense of satisfaction builds

or erodes, depending on how those conversations go, and so I just like it's it's not maybe it is happening nowhere else, but in the time line of your experience is that you have not on some other planet for those moments of conversation. So it's anyway uttered a few one are sympathetic with that, but it seems to me that they can be married. I am I like the argument I actually talk about. Dance were quite a lot in my book and and I M about later on. We are with with a discussion exactly that scenario. He offers the example of a swimming pool,

and you spend your ninety fibres anytime. This line a swimming pool you now bringing Vienna, kilometers and feeling great and then the fibers anytime. You look back and see my life is a waste I just wasting. I'm in this has no value and the way he would put it is well that's ninety five percent happy and five percent miserable as problematic. Actually that's you know better than most lives, so sick with it. I don't know about this crucially differ from what am I feel free to press on and Andor criticised that view, but there's a few wrinkles there that I would like to agree with you that this that doesn't capture what I'm after so How far are you willing to do so? There is a view which I think dance halls, because if you told me all that which, as you know at a sort of straightforward hedonism, which is, we think, there's something about the experience of say all my life as a waste, and I wish I was helping people in this

domini purpose. We think that sort of a different kind of motivation, then a motivation that makes us one align the poor, but it's all the same his own pleasure right in this or that all altruism, is in fact some kind of cells gratification. That's right! I'm the denizens make this argument, but I've heard enough I've. I've made a lot of up. I dont want worth looking at moral motivations and why we sometimes do good things. We other cruel things to each other and I think there is very strong evidence. We have more honestly moral motivations. We don't just want to run you impressed others we really want to do. Do good suffers, sometimes bad stuff, but the hidden as will push. And say what you know when you, when you want to give up a really pleasant afternoon, to go visit a sick friend in the hospital you think. You're doing because you care about a friend, but really you like the buzz you get from doing an hour and you

you want to avoid the pain, the guilt of not doing it whether there is truth to that, but that's not as deflationary it. I think he'd nest would allege mincer the buzz you get in another word for that is or potential words for that is our love and compassion and connection and new, that's friendship. You nice! I give it depending on the circumstances, this some of the good stuff in life that you, yes, you you can say you want it selfishly, but it's a wise form of selfishness is not just another Hotfoot Sunday You know, there's no regret component like that. There's a kind of hedonism that is by its very nature superficial and therefore, when you look back on it, it doesn't really survive scrutiny like you, you it's very easy for.

I want to run the argument. They okay, you've wasted your life. All you did was stay in a swimming pool, the whole time really the whole time. I don't care how perfect the temperature that pool was. It was more to life than that, and yet you wouldn't say that of I wouldn't say: oh all you did was surround yourself with people Yahoo. You deeply low and cared for, and you made their lives better and you prioritized meaning using human suffering across the board, and he became famous for your compassion and millions of people well said you were their hero and and had this virtuous circle, where everything was aligned in your life and you there was no possibility of hypocrisy, and while you are like I closed doors was every bit as noble as what is how you print and seem to be in public, and oh yeah, they just wasted your life. Exactly I mean tenders to separate objections you could make first. This is what you alluded to earlier wishes. you know, support suppose you say I use we spend avenue visiting a sick friend and it wasn't was not a fun when

George, you said well, I feel good about. I did the right thing in our first. Why do you Gilbert about it? Why you feel good about it? Because you were, you want to do good things, because you have a motivation to do good you, you recognize its value and that's what drives the pleasure. It's not the same pleasure as biting into a sugary treat and having them pull the right now sure. Anything second, and, as is maybe a deeper objection, is as a motivational theory. This often simply mistaken. We both have kids and we want our kids to flourish and be happy, and sometimes it's a lot of, frame for us to do so a lot of work. Maybe you know you must have some things you wanna do. Maybe you, Charles going through a difficult time in your struggling with your child, to help out and if some psychologist was to say, wait. You really just doing this because you get a pleasurable bows from doing,

I think you are right to say that ridiculous, what he willingly doesn't always yours, you value certain things that doesn't the research showing that Ngos, Coastal Dan Gilberts Research, specifically that basically parenthood is a is a net negative for all everybody for a very long time at like I don't forget what the time course of real recovery period is here, but don't you basically have diminished happen as for many many years were reliably becoming apparent. You know it's complicated, so yeah, there's there's someone

still done with Danny Condiment, finds that if you use a beeper with parents and it beeps randomly when they're with their kids, despite what do tell you to kind of miserable being with kids ranks somewhere around. You know menial housework and far below things like interacting with friends and I having sex and having a good time, and this research finds that non parents. Sorry parents are worse, have it worse than non parents the research with them like loves, describe, looks at marital satisfaction. When you have kids and ideas, you stole a very happy before you have kids, you have kids satisfaction drops you have more kids, a drops Morton your teenage years is at the bottom and then they start to leave the house in your happiness raised his eyes. He has this line, saying don't sign,

de nests and round. This increase smiling vibrated devises Connemara Gilbert. This is your where this is Gilbert. Condom is nowhere near as funny brilliant, but no winners funny, but it gets more complicated, so others studies since then have found that it depends. What you are. Fathers tend to be happier with parenthood, then mothers, older people happier and younger people, Henderson enormous country, difference where countries that countries that have a lot of child support, scandinavian countries and one for them, parents are actually happier than on parents. The country out of twenty survey of twenty two countries, which is the biggest happiness blow having kiss for one reason or another, is United States. So, even if you're just a hidden son, I think you should be just even image as a unit. It's kind of complicated how you situated whether my back

gets here, but I think an end. When you ask people Lisbon, we asked people, do you regret having kids even in private survey, people's ignore greatest thing in my life? here is where you might jump in and say well, this could be a case of self delusion too, to say this biggest thing of your life, which caused so much so much transformation. Some of the negative was a bad thing in the stake. Maybe too much will be able to bear any might tell himself good stories about it, but I actually think that when people answer a question I got are not talking about. He learns to not talking about leisure, to talk with other sources of value, yet, minister, so interesting because

Maybe less jump to suffering for a second cause. It there's something and unsought suffering caused something clarifying about it. I was thinking no at one point. In reading your book, I asked myself, I think you were talking about why people seek out horror, movies and other noxious stimuli and am also those cases where you know about it. sperience is rated as something that, in the end, is a net positive, which seems somewhat paradoxical or can seem paradoxical, because they can be something that, by definition, you would never want to repeat right, but you get people saying that there are glad it happened to them Riah and outside it. I ask myself the question now: what's the worst thing, I've ever seen in my life, so I made out of hell described this because it may be that a trigger warnings. In order to combat these crimes at Amsterdam. Stealing myself, absolutely horrible, but tat is not.

Should I whip my. I wish this thing hadn't happened because it happened to somebody else and it was a horrible thing to happen, but I can't say that I wish I hadn't seen it, but there's no way. If you told me Ok, you got! You can see that again No way I would decide to see it again is psychologically is just it's strange to being the spot, but anyway I was a trip to India and am we're in the back of a taxi driving down one of these predictably chaotic roads outside of Delhi, and there was a bus. There was the attic. I'm an odd part had an odd angle with the curb and there was a massive traffic jam or slowly pass. This biased and people are moving around in its had all the signs of something untoward had happened and on the bus. Look like it. It hit something interesting by parkin on the curb Owsley scanning the scene looking

See you looking reunited as one does your morbidly. Looking for the thing that you are you and wish you hadn't seen, but still this is why traffic predictably slows wonders and accident. So I was looking over the scene to see what had happened. and I was a minor unfolded this way and I am looking it look like it had hit a fruit cart and it was just the fruit. Cart was just obliterated and I was looking for a person or people, and I thought I experiences profound relief that there was no people and there are no people inside They have been hit by this bus, and then I recognized in the next moment that what I thought was a fruit cart was in fact a person who had just been obliterated by a speeding bus. I mean literally, this person had been smeared over forty feet of pavement and it wasn't

Salute Lamed mine, stopping vision of just the most awful thing that can happen, and so that's the worst thing were seen with my eyes that was real, and yet I can't say that I wish I had never seen it, but I would have, of course, never want to be in that situation again. Soldiers who is psychologically it some if I had to specify the good came to me from seeing at it, and I was sitting with one of my best friends may this episode. It was a shared experience, rights of this now, something that we have. We have talked about it often his come to mind occasionally, and it was just it's. A kind of corn or condition of human existence is like it's a sad kind of peak, and it's strange to call it a peak experience, but the kind of peak experience in the sense that it was that arresting so there's Derek their experiences of emergency and sheer unpleasantness and horror

can still if their abbreviated enough or their knock on effects are not continuous and terrible for you personally, they do so go in the column of experiences you recall. Had you had an you would wouldn't in fact wish to be without. I think that's right. I'm for the most part taken intuitive view that unjust and suffering is a bad thing, but occasionally there are things that you would experience that can have a positive effect on you that you would have never chosen to experience and they can have a positive effect. In terms of you know, changing everything but the world, changing your your emotions or simply broadening your scope of human experience. So I think out of claims about the benefits of an shows. The suffering are exaggerated, but there's act the psychological evidence that looks at peoples the amount of suffering people having their life and it turns out that

people who have had very low amounts of suffering, tender, low pay, intolerance and more resilience and in other research, still ass kind. There less able to help other people, you maybe something to be said for the idea that a certain amount of an chosen suffering I dont, know bill, scan, murder, toughens, you up. I note the same studies find people who report a lot of suffering and our lives also have long pain, tolerance and no resemblance to a kind of a sweet spot in the middle there. Would you just expect there to be some kind of normal distribution over this work, something like on the question of what doesn't kill. You makes you stronger, there's gonna be a cohort for her.

that is absolutely true in a card for whom it's absolutely not true. I would expect that. I would also expect that maybe the suffering the desert, the most good, is of an intermediate sort. Here you know meekly is, as you know, he loves aphorisms and such an exaggeration. Often what doesn't kill us causes terrible damage we never recover from here, but sometimes sometimes the right sort of unchecked and suffering could lead to a positive transformation. He had been so that the so many am intersecting issues here, because every you, you would think you know as Danny caught him and thought rarely in his career, that you should just be able to aggregate this stuff in it

in a straightforward way, but we know that there are so many other variables or their framing effects were basically the same. Experience can be good or bad, depending on how you conceptualize at him- and this is obviously Shakespeare got her first was the actual quote. There is nothing either good or bad, but think he makes it so here and there's that- and there is also just this asymmetry between pain and pleasure, or happiness and suffering, which is the bad commensurately. Bad things are in fact incommensurable within with the good things and even to see the order of things matters, we weight loss as more significant than gain even more talk about this thing right, which is to say you. You know you people care more about losing a hundred dollars and gaining a hundred dollars. So how do you recommend that we start doing the arithmetic

in our own lives is we're trying to figure out what's important? What should supersede something else was sacrificed Caesar worth making how much meaning making struggle is a good idea versus just you know, an expense we we shouldn't actually be paying when we we not really, should we be wiser to be in in the big warm pool with Dan Gilbert. How do you think about these things for yourself I think this the hard problem of life in over motivational, pluralist, which I think we are, and we want many things. Then there is the question of how to treat them and another determined relative value and is the question that can't be that at every point we have to decide whether to sort of you now lie on the couch, unwashed Netflix, our visitors? A friend or I don't know, read up on astronomy and learn. Some facts we didn't know

then stand on one leg and watch networks and just both go and at the same time. Yes, you do. You do Netflix Waller, while doing pushups or something under the skin. Everything all onward out. but yet we know that there is a certain balance and people choose different sides of this balance. I like em they're, deserve a wonderful thought experiment by the philosopher, nosek of inexperienced machine newer. They they plug you into a machine. and you live a rich for happy life, does not real it's the matrix, basically and no success? One? Nobody would want to choose to go into the machine because The machine is you think I don't know you think you have a rich fulfilling relationships and people who love you and climbing Mt Everest in solving world hunger, but just allusion. This is a dream. You not doing anything Europe Blob and then no success who wants to be a block, an eye

sheer knows extend to astonish you curious whether you do too that I wouldn't want to get plugged into the machine, regardless of how much pleasure it gives me But I gotta admit I've been asking students undergraduates graduate students about experience machine for a long time. and a substantial number of them I think I'm getting the now more than half say yeah I plug in here. What is also interest when you consider it from the other side, because- and this is something you you doing your book when you when you try to disentangle it from status quo bias. And ass. I am, and you you're all ready in the machine and now you're being you're being lifted out and you're in it consulted, and you want to go back to that supremely happy fake life that you just. I was real for the last fifty years and dumb. Viewed from that side, you could see more people wanting to plug back in if they realize the thing that they had had been enjoy.

and so much you know it is what their returning to it really shook me up. When I read about that the case will switch the priors when they switch that the status quo, because I was definitely a no machine the guy? And then, if I you know, I wake up boom listeners, a flash in the sitting room and some technicians or say you know you ve, been the machine for ten years. This is your annual. We take you out and let me say in how do you want to go back and If, of course, if you go back, we wipe out your memory. This experience, you think, is the real life, but it's just an illusion and I think,

imagined they give up my children and people. I love and projects I'm engaged in an I. She would feel is wave of horror that it was all in all nothing to dream, but I think I want to go back to them back. You know I have too much attachments to think of cutting myself lose even if they turned out to be imaginary or internet. Most people have had this experience of wanting to get back into a dream right leg. You wake up this incredibly fun dream, and you wish you could just close your eyes and jumped back. In fact, I think we're once or twice in my life. I've managed to do that, and so that's obvious you're not committing further the rest of your existence to do that, but its people have that they show a truly a willingness to be diverted as pleasantly as possible by something they know. It isn't real not for their entire lives, but for a surprising

portion of it when you count all the time we spend vicariously going on adventures with others through fiction and film and television and all the rest. That's right so to go back to your question. How do you balance all of this dancer? Is you don't you pleasure zero. I count a of people who are hidden us and they say look one word answer to what people want in his pleasure I don't agree with them, but I also to integrate people. Is that it's all about meaning and struggle and purpose, because some value? It has some intrinsic value, and it has. Value is part of a good life. I mean took to go back to your question so about all of these biases and negativity bias in order bias think, and how do we cope with this Youtube taken in a bit of a different direction and say whatever problems these pose. There are also a source of fun, so in a part of my book right talk about suffering as a source,

pleasure parties and was playing with these fires. So you might give you Is there a bad experience like a very hot bath, sauna or spacey food in order to get pleasure from the relief when that goes away, so very sort of normal human beings, you may enjoy the mastery of control pain, You may enjoyed a rhythm, so on get exam, revenge films- you must have seen John Wick, I've seen one of them were or most at one of them. So I get here edgier I ever you got the judgment in the first one is a retired. Ass, an end then the early in the movie, I'm some russian box. as he has run in with killers dog at its very sad and then arrested movie. He takes revenge, that's not letting another really evil killing the family is not enough. If they have to kill the dog than you, and he's not a really gonna deserve what they get race to use,

you feel riotous decently kill some people towards enemies. It isn't is excessive, but it's not excessive at all. As John, we must secure hundred a thousand people You feel yeah. I was a dog they had it coming, and this movie, has rhythm to it and a sort of a classic rhythm for many many movies in many stories, which is bad thing than good thing, and if you were story so foolish thing, why does he be a better movie took out that sad part of the dog? You can't have a good part without the bad part, revenge. Films have to have the bad act, so we feel so justified so happy when the good stuff comes here. What it there's a direct analogy to life

to come back to common and the peak and rule, or I guess, TAT S the end role of the order of things matters and wheat. We feel like a bad thing, followed by a good thing: redeems the whole enterprise, whereas a good thing followed by a bad thing, is a catastrophe That's right, there's there's a rhythm of the lives. We want psychologists, have ass people, questions like how do you want your life to go people wonder lives to get better and better. Andrew Sunday colleague, James Dean Effect, where people really, Of lives that end on a high note, as opposed to most of our lives, which made a pick out a certain point and then often the last few years, and so great and people, even if those last few years are happy still it's better to Anna High now, take a more local case. Take it take a job you work out for ten years and each year, your salary, those up of that fact, but inflation that is an absolute value. Your salary goes up a bit versus you, Workin ajar for ten years each year, salary drops.

But suppose it turned out that the mass was such that no dropping case. You actually made overall, more money, still people say well next sucks. I want things to get better here. It is really interesting, as I am always tempted to take, leave, step further back and say that ok are our default reactions to these parameters. very likely wrong and weak it. We should be able to subsume even those with a a wider view still which corrects for them some ill at once. You understand the asymmetry between loss and gain and then as now, Strictly rational Asia. You should care about a hundred dollars exactly a hundred dollars worth right and should,

had a weathers going into your wallet or coming out of your wallet yeah. Then you should be able to perform that correction for yourself and even savings in certain cases uncouple what you deem to be good from leaving unity. Can't change your moment moment, experience of it or even the way you feel when making a retrospective account, you still should be able to perform some kind. Of course, direction. Here, though, the only place my life, I'm trying to figure out where this I've actually applied this- and it is the only place- is coming to Mind- is on the topic of altruism and and philanthropy. Mrs Generative heard any my conversations with the philosopher Wilma Castle was one of the the young fathers of fur, the negative, altruism movement and itself famously what they have done to save they ve worked to uncouple judgments of,

the most efficacious use of resources from the way any given use resources makes us feel right of their causes, to which you could give your money which give you immediate good, feels they have a really compelling stories and nice graphic design on their brochures and sometimes as a cause. They shouldn't even exist right is just empty completely misconceived. saved charity. That's not not only not doing that the good it thinks is doing. This is actively doing harm in the world, and then you have far less sexy causes to which you could give money, which you can never feel quite as good about, because his there's no way to tell a Super compelling story about them, but when you actually do the analysis, there super efficient ways of mitigating human suffering and and long term risk, and so it's just

I've. Just maybe haven't thought about her enough talk about it enough and wanting to Idiot proof. This part of my life, I have just decided. Ok, doing good actually doing good is fully divorce or from how I feel while doing that good, and I want to get as many good feels as I can out of it. But the Ethan and the project can't be made selling it enough for us to give me the feeling of heroism. I would feel if I ran into a burning building and and say it's a little kid will then so be it I'll still pray Oregon. resources are prioritizing the non sexy efficacious thing: because in the end it just matters how much suffering you're you're. In fact mitigating no I mean, as you know, this is here now you're talking Catholicism to the poem

my my aunt, I am busy Bobby's terms on exactly that point that that are feeling we ve talked about is many times and they were very much on the same page, which is what makes this happy satisfied makes us feel a good people is often quite divorced from ashy. What makes a difference? Peter Skinner has a great example of this. He says that often people like to give two many many charity smaller house. Sometimes so small amounts that processing the Czechs causing I lose money could become a burden to those charity has great an infringement of the oh, my gosh lifesaving away, while helping arrogance and examples like life. If you like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe. Sam Herriston work once you do. You get access to all full length episode, the making sense podcast, along with other subscriber, only content, including bonus, episodes and animals

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