#873 - Lionel Page - The Invisible Psychology Of Happiness & Meaning

27:43They're clearly be well -being on your expectations. So you told them that if they were going to do well, they will have all these rewards. So what do you do now? Do you just keep them giving them all these rewards all the time? They don't need to work very hard, because their xx is very talented. So if you keep giving them rewards, if you do that, it's not going to nerds same to do better, because they don't need to work hard. They're super talented. If on the contrary you find out that your child has difficulties, it's a challenge, it's struggling to be very good. You say, sorry, you're not very good, so no reward for you, never.

28:17So that's not going to help the child as well. So what you'll do is that you'll adapt your schedule to us. If you find out that your child is excessively good at chess, you say, okay, but maybe I'm going to give you a tutor and I'm going to, and if you win tournaments, you know, you'll have more rewards, whatever, depends on. In Australia, what we do is we have a lot of, it's very athletic as a country, very spawning. So you bring your kids to the swimming pool and you see whether they are good and if they are good, you enter them in competition, you may have seen in the Olympic Games which drives us very well in swimming because everybody swims in this country.

28:53So what you do as a parent here is that you won't tell your kid before, oh wait, I'm telling you that if you're successful, you get this reward, but if you're very successful, like, well, I'm going to move the cart for the head. You want to, you don't do sell because if the kid knows that, if they do very well, then you're going to move the cart well head. There'll be like, what's the point? And nature does exactly the same thing with us. That is for us to work very hard. We think, oh, you know, if I need to achieve these things, very important. And all the information tells you if you if you can achieve it, we have this kind of urge.

29:27The paper I've written on it, the title is called, if you can, you must. So if you feel that you can, you really get excited by the idea that you want to do it. If you can't, if it's way far ahead of the realm of what you can achieve, you don't want to try. You won't be interested. But if you think, you know what, I think I think I could run a marathon. You will try. You want to try if you think it's prestigious enough. If you think, well, I think I can run a marathon, but in four hours, you know, then you'll start thinking about how can I achieve that? What kind of steps? And it feels good to think that I think could achieve this.

30:01Then the problem is like, let's say you start, you know, you start thinking maybe I could run a marathon and running a marathon will be something which I think is not shiver. You start running and you think actually I'm pretty good. So now running a marathon is not enough. You'll have to do it maybe under four hours or maybe more or maybe a better time. So the character will keep moving forward and your head and neck system kind of lie to you initially because you're doing system tell you initially, oh if you reach this goal, you'd be happy, you know. But as you realize that you are able to reach this goal, maybe you can reach better.

30:35So if you can reach better, now the count has to move ahead. And now it's this initial goal is not enough anymore. And you want this additional goal for the head. And the problem, I totally understand people in your shows who say, why do I do that? Well, it's by design, we're designed to be like that. And we're designed to be like that. And we're designed not to anticipate. Because if you want to anticipate that if you achieve the next goal, you'll get used to it and you think about the another goal afterwards. Well, you'd be like, what the point? I work hard and I may as well just enjoy life as it is now.

31:07Oh, so that's why we overestimate the importance of our next success for our happiness, because if we didn't think, well, once I achieve X, I'll be fine. If we didn't have that thought, if we assumed accurately that each different destination is just base camp before the next destination gets unlocked and gets appeared to us, we would be much less motivated to go and do it. It's exactly that. If you think that it's very important to have this next promotion, this promotion will give you status and prestige and income that you think that's what I want in life, then you work very hard for it. But actually, in reality, once you have it, six months later, it says, okay what next you know next challenge, like we do better etc.

31:56If you anticipate that initially if you anticipate that the cart is always going to move forward, beyond you, beyond your reach, then that's not motivating anymore to reach the next step because you know that you know the same process will repeat. What's the focusing illusion? But that's exactly that. So the focusing illusion is the term proposed by Daniel Kalemann and his co -authors and says that you focus in life you say, you tend to focus on some things and say, this is really what I need. And people may have different view about whether they need to be happy. Maybe some people say, you know, what I need is a romantic partner, which is attractive and faithful and friendly, etc.

32:36And if I get that, I'll be happy. Some other people say, well, what I really want to be rich, all the people may say, you know, what I want is just a group of friends, good social So you really care, you say, this is what I need. And usually you say that when you don't have it and you think you would be really happy, you focus on that, this is the key for you to achieve happiness in your life. And then when you, when, if and when you get it, eventually you come to realize that it was not so important for your happiness. So the key example given by Kahneman or people in the US who think that, But if I only had a job in California, you know, with a fantastic weather, brilliant lifestyle, and so, you know, maybe if you live in, let's say, Minnesota, where winter are very cold, you imagine that you'd be very happy if you moved to California.

33:26Now what Kanemann did is when you asked people who moved from Minnesota or something like that to California, and says, are you more happy now? And basically, after six months, a year, people say, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm a happy but they didn't get the kind of change in life satisfaction that they were thinking they would when they were not there. So how can we set goals to the highest level of what we think that we can achieve instead of finding happiness in lower aspirations? Surely that would allow us more direct access to happiness. Oh, yeah, you're totally right. Like, you, a goal, you can think of it, we thought we use the word reference point before.

34:11You can think as a reference point. So you judge where you are, how well you're doing as a, with these goals as a reference. So if you have a very low goal, everything looks good. If my goal in life is just to have a nice job, a house somewhere, not necessarily in luxury suburb, you know, et cetera. Well, it's much easier to achieve that if I say my goal is to be a top manager to have a very high income level, etc. So having a high goal Makes that for a given level if I have a logo this looks great if I have a high goal the same thing is not going to look great So a very simple path to happiness is to have low aspirations And if you look in history, you know, I talk about stoicism or Buddhism Or epicurism as well.

34:56So a lot of the kind of historical people have to happiness recommendations like it's very simple, it's like stop desiring what you do not have. Just be happy what you have and that's a circuit of happiness. And there is something very true in it is that if you are able to stop, you know, try to get outside of this race where the goal keeps moving forward. So, as you know, I'm healthy, I have a good meal every day, you know, got electricity, warm water, my ancestors didn't have that at all. So that's a fairly good life, right? I don't need to chase further success and further success. So if you're able to do that, you can extract yourself from this pressure, you'll feel better.

35:42But then what you have is that your head on the X -SIM is not designed for you to feel good. As we say before, your head on the X -SIM is designed for you to be as successful as possible,

35:56as all the information available to identify what you can do. And if you learn that you can do something better, well, your head and neck system should just a notch above and says, we have to do it. Your head, you're not designed to be happy and angelic. You're designed to really try as hard as possible. And the reason is that you're not designed to be happy in life. You're designed to try as hard as possible. What an app. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly, because if you think about on sisters, some on sisters may be born with psychological trace with the enjoyed being on the beach and you know it there was enough if there is enough food, you have enough food and fish and one fish etc.

36:41And some others were maybe a bit more neurotic wanted to always work harder harder. Well unfortunately for us you know the people who are the most neurotic and keep trying harder and harder are more likely to be on sisters now. We are the progeny of the most anxious insecure overachievers across time. So I would say, you know, there's a balance, but a head -on -ic system should be designed to keep finding the best thing you can achieve. So as I said before, you know, it's not worth you being depressed every day because you're not Elon Musk. There's no point into it. But you should identify what is the best thing can achieve, really best thing, and then aim for it.

37:26And so our head on the system does that. We get a lot of information for what we have done before, what people like us have done. And then we integrate all this information and you think, okay, what's somebody like me can do? I have some psychological traits, which makes me better at some things. Maybe if I'm very good at talking to people, I should have to do it to be a manager or maybe a public speaker if I'm very good at math and maybe thinking You know what should do is working in engineering or in finance. So you'll try to find given who I am and the trace I have what is the best thing can do and you don't need to think you know a lot care consciously about it You'll pick it up.

38:07You'll pick up that wait a minute This person is like me and this person is is very successful. Why am I not doing this? And the character will keep moving forward because it's designed just to push you not too far, but as far as possible. I've been thinking a lot about the difference between feeling happy when you succeed and just feeling relieved. It seems that there is a regular framing that success is the only acceptable outcome. And anything short of that is a failure. So the achievement of success isn't, it turns the achievement of success, not from a cause for joy into just the abatement of fear.

38:48You know what I mean? Oh, I avoided disappointment, congratulations. But that's such a, you know, for the, again, for the sort of high -eachieving, high -expectation, low -confidence people out there, that, it's a lose -lose scenario. I didn't achieve the goal, how miserable I feel about myself. I did achieve the goal. Well, that's the only acceptable outcome. Yeah, look, that's fascinating. It's another, you can explain it from how happiness works. Happiness is going to work in your brain, always setting expectations and giving you feedback about whether you're doing better than expectations or lower than expectations.

39:27Now when you aim for a goal, usually the resolution toward this goal is going to take time to take place over time. So if you're working to get a promotion in a company, you have progressively information whether you're doing well enough to be promoted. So your impression, but whether things are going well or not, and as things get better, you feel more and more happy. Similarly, let's say you run a marathon as you're running the marathon, you're getting information whether you're likely to finish or not. So the thing is that you will consume the benefit of success all throughout as you get closer from the goal.

40:05So if you look at games like in the US, you have American football for some. The guy starts being happy before they touch, this is called the touch down. They start being happy as they know that there is nobody, you know, in front of them and they are going to score the touch down. And so they start consuming anyway the happiness of the success before the success happens exactly. And then when you reach it, when you reach the success, the only thing which could happen is that you, you may be 99 % chance of being successful, but you could still mess up. So you're running toward the touch -john and you fumble within one meter, that would be catastrophe.

40:43So you have a relief because you have already realized that you are going to be successful, so you're super happy, but there's a risk that you could not, and that's this final stuff that you're happy not to be failing. Yeah, I love this line from you about how the attainment of a goal seems when the moment of triumph is almost like a letdown because so few people sit back and enjoy it and most people just create another goal that they want to strive for. But the implication of that is presumably they prefer the process of striving toward a goal as opposed to the state of actually having achieved it, which seems completely backward, right?

41:26Because what you're not saying, why are you pursuing that goal for the pursuit of the goal? No, you're not pursuing the goal for the pursuit of the goal. You're pursuing the goal because you want to achieve the goal, but every single bit of evidence about the way that we behave suggests that we prefer the striving as opposed to the achieving. So I think there's two things. First, you will enjoy the striving because the striving is really going toward the goal. It's like reducing the chance that you're going to be successful. But obviously at the very end, the fact that you indeed are successful, There is still an important step.

42:03So if you look for sports matches, and let's say your team is ahead in the game, right? You start being happy that you realize you are very likely to win before the end of the match, but nonetheless, when the whistle blows and you win the match, you're happy because that's a final outcome that the success is realized. Now, what you have is that, relative to expectations, relative to maybe the food about how you would feel before if you were to be successful, then you have this focusing illusion. So I have this quote in one of my substag about Andrea Gacy. It's in his book, Open. And Andrea Gacy, I'm not sure if people remember because it's a few decades ago, but there was a lot of pressure.

42:50It was a very talented player, but there was a lot of pressure that he was a bit rowdy, and people say maybe he's not this kind of guy who can actually win big titles. And then he won, win, build them. And then he said, well, I felt let down because I was led to believe that winning a grand slam would be life changing. I wouldn't be the same person. You know, I would acquire maybe another level of existence. Big word, but you know, you you'd grow into something else having reached this very high level of achievement. And he said, Well, I felt exactly this in person and Compared that to help Depressed and sad I was when I was losing in the final of the Grand Slam.

43:33I was not that happy having won And so that's a thing because you focus you would focus on thinking that the Grand Slam is what he needs to be happy But once he gets a Grand Slam If yeah, Julie is very happy on the day, right? That's that's one thing on the day is happy me cry whatever But a few days later He's hidden in system is going to kick in is this wait a minute if you want one you can do more You know you can do number one So the next time he's in three months. Yeah gold medalist syndrome. I think it's cold Oh, yes, you have the gold medalist you have them I'm not sure if you are you referring because there's a you know you have this studio about the goals silver and bronze middle.

44:15Oh no, I think gold medalists. So yes, that being bronze is happier than being silver because bronze is two steps away from winning, but silver was very close. I think at least my again, bro signs of the gold medalist syndrome was that a lot of the time when people had finally achieved their championship that they wanted the Olympics and they left like Andre Agassi feeling significantly less fulfilled than they'd hoped or anticipated that they then and tell them, well, ah, right, it's because I have to do it twice. It's because I have to prove that it was a fluke. That's what the problem is. That's what.

44:52Yeah. So I didn't know the term, it's interesting, I didn't know this term, but yes, that's exactly that. And I think, you know, but that's what we're in a way doomed to experience because if you win one, well, that's a good, you know, it's good correlation. People win one slam, often they win more than one. And so eventually, you should be, you know, If people were like, I win one slam and I'm happy now I'm going to enjoy cocktails as a hotel. Well, that's a, you know, a condition for the success. Yeah. It's a, it's so funny. The, the sort of cursive continuing to succeed. If you are a competent person and you break new ground, each new achievement doesn't feel like a cause for celebration.

45:33It simply feels like the next minimum acceptable outcome that you can have the next time you do the thing. Exactly, exactly. And the funny thing is that you have these,

45:46the thing that all people behind or below these very highly successful people, think that the people were very successful, are very happy. So, I can imagine that, let's say if you're on social media, and if you start, if you're only a half, 10 followers, or not 10 followers, that's the thing will be very happy. People with 10 ,000 followers that you think is one minute, you know, one on our 50 ,000, people were 50 ,000 says, why don't have like, you know, 200? And we don't know that. So we think that these people are happy, but these people are just looking to step ahead. Have you ever looked at the research around when you ask people what their ideal level of annual income would be?

46:27So yeah, I look, I remember, but I don't remember the numbers, but I saw a study. And maybe do you remember? So I remember what the outcome was, which is basically, it's almost always about three times what you earn right now. So people will say, well, I would be, you know, I'm at, I own 50 ,000 pounds a year, 150 would, you know, that would really be. But the people at 150 say, yeah, I mean, 450 would really be, and then it just keeps on going and keeps on going. And it's very reliable. It's all the way up. You know, the millionaires jealous of billionaires, the billionaires jealous of multi billionaires.

47:08Oh, yeah. So I can't tell you a few things about these counts. It's a first on the level, on the very basic level, you ask people, let's say, when they're 20, what would be a good life? You know, what would be something where when you're 40, you have achieved and you're happy. I'll say, I don't know, I've got a house in the suburb, I've got a car, I've got a big TV, you know, And then you go out somewhere 40 okay you've got a car you've got the house got a big TV Is it do you think you have a good life as well? You know not really because you know I don't have this thing. I don't have that etc So people move their goal poses the kind of stuff that they said they would be happy with is not enough for them to be Satisfied so that's a first thing interesting thing and then in terms of people always looking ahead.

47:56There was, I remember I listened one to an interview of a psychological specialist of the psychology of millionaires. And he said, you know, when I'm saying that the psychologists of maybe not millionaires, but like super rich, maybe multimillionaires or billionaires, when I say that I'm a psychologist for these guys, people say, well, wait a minute, they don't have any problem. And the problem is is that he says, no, no, contrary, they're often they're very miserable because you know if you earn 50 or $100 ,000 your next comparison point is maybe the person who had get $150 ,000 but if you are a millionaire, the next comparison point is a guy who is twice the size of your house, he's as multimillionured with all these VIPs coming in and so they are super frustrated that they are not competing well enough with the next guys ahead.

48:48Will Smith in the memoir that Mark Manson wrote said when I was poor and miserable I had hope when I was rich and miserable I was despondent That's a good one. That's what we're not like it. Yeah, I just you know the It very much is the case that happiness is not Achieving a thing. It's not being rich. It's being a little bit richer than yesterday consistently over and over again. You're right. Yeah, so here again, here's a trick that is that we are, we experience positive feelings from doing better than expected. So when you go up, usually, you know, there's a part of uncertainty, which is resolved.

49:38It's usually, you know, if you're promoted, there was not 100 % chance initially. So as you win and you are successful, there's an element of surprise, of positive surprise. And so you enjoy that. But if you were on a schedule where you're the growth of your income, for instance, so the promotion is totally scheduled, there's no uncertainty, maybe because your income is indexed on inflation and it's going to increase whatever, or maybe not on a seniority. So as you get older and older your income automatically increase, then if you expect these increases, even if you're doing better, you will not feel better because all these increments are going to be factored in.

50:25You expect them and if you expect them, you're not going to be more satisfied. That's a trick. Yeah, the relationship between happiness and expectation of Surprise is it feels so ruthless because by design you can't design surprise Like if you knew that it was going to happen. It wouldn't be a fucking surprise Yeah, yeah, and you know you may wonder why why why we design like that? Where can't we have something like? happiness, which is something like a mountain, and you start from the bottom, and as you more and more successful in Lax, you get more and more happiness. Why we're not designing that?

51:04And the quick answer is that designing a system, which instead of measuring big difference like that, only focused on measuring variations related to expectations, it's a more efficient system to treat information and to use whatever cognitive capacity you have in your brain to produce a signal which is going to help you. So it's a bit abstract but I can say that something which we have learned in the last first 30 years is having a very interesting convergence between AI research and reinforcement learning and cognitive neuroscience. And what some creative neuroscience found out is that the brain looks like when the brain rewards you as a difference, you know, relative to your expectations, it's pretty much looks like it's implementing optimal algorithms used in machine learning.

51:59So you'd have people working in artificial intelligence trying to program how a program is going to learn the right thing to do. And the best one simple thing for this program to learn is to say, well, from expectations about what different actions are going to lead to. And then try out, and when you try the action, you just compare. Is this action the outcome better than expected or wasn't expected? And then you adjust your expectation. And if you try a lot, eventually you are going to learn to do the right thing. It's pretty much exactly what we do. And it's an efficient way of processing information.

52:35It would be much more difficult for your brain to have a very complete map about, you know, happiness from zero to the top. It's better to have a kind of a local stuff guiding you locally. Incremental. Incremental. Incremental. Yeah, how interesting. So talk to me. Let's expand this out a little bit more into habituation and sort of the adaptive explanation for habituation more broadly. Like why, why didn't evolution just design us with the ability to feel greater and greater happiness whenever we do better? Well, it's exactly what I was saying before. It's more efficient. I think a very good comparison is our visual system.

53:17That's exactly the same thing. So, you know, your visual system doesn't kind of recall the objective luminosity in a room.

53:29the objective immunity. Actually, it's not measuring it. From the time where the light hits your retina, what's recorded is actually a divergent relative to expectations. And what you see is that if you turn off the light somewhere, so now you see things, you turn off the light, everything is bleak. So you can't see anymore. But if you wait a bit, your eyes are going to adapt, you're going to start seeing shades, etc. And so you're going to be able to perceive difference in contrast that you were not perceiving before. What has happened is that your eye, what is does exactly the same thing that you have a kind of an expectation and you observe differences within this range.

54:04If suddenly I change the range of luminosity, your eye doesn't see anything anymore. So you have to adapt to eventually proceed again the differences and having this wise, it's useful because if you have a kind of range where you can perceive differences, you want to maximally use this range in the area are you all? If I was to look at this range itself, I have to stretch it to observe any kind of differences. Then the problem is that a lot of things would look the same because you have a limited ability to perceive differences. So I want to use this ability to perceive differences the most in the area where there are variations that I need to observe.

54:41So my eyes are optimally adapting my ability to perceive difference in contrast in the range of contrast that I'm now. And if you turn off, turn the light off or put a bright light, I'm going to adapt to this new range. And your happiness is the same thing. So your perception of subjective values, they adapt to the range you're facing. So you know, if you are not very rich selling sandwiches on a on a on a cart, you know, you need to be careful about not losing $10. So you'll be mindful about making not making mistakes such that, you know, when you come to the money, you're handing in and getting back that you're not losing money because this money is important.

55:22But let's say that you scratch a low -to -card and you become a millionaire. Well, Tendolas doesn't matter anymore. So why would you care? Why would you allocate some of your perception of value to difference in Tendolas when this doesn't matter anymore? Is there an implication then if sort of incrementalism, this step -by -step nature of us slowly getting toward our goals. Is there an implication that sudden huge leaps in improvement of life circumstances are actually very bad for us? If you win the lottery, how are you going to ever have a better day than the day that you won the lottery? It sets this new unreasonable standard for you as opposed to the person who's maybe tormented by their daily grinds to move toward their goals, but presumably if you're already on that sort of path and momentum, you were only half a step behind yesterday and you can be half a step ahead tomorrow, the difference between that and somebody that just has a windfall and that dies with $50 million and gives it to them or something, where'd you go from there?

56:26You don't even have any systems to be able to locate yourself. So I think you'll write that if you are very successful very quickly, one challenge you face is to reset, you know, because we're designed for that, we're designed to have goals and to move forward, etc. So one is one challenge you face is to reset your goals in life. If you're not able to do that, if you're not challenging more, first you may become bored, you know, if you don't think that you have anything to achieve. But also you may make mistakes. So I think I've heard that people win the lottery and were not specially reached before.

57:05Often they get counseling and you can imagine so because if you're used to have a lot of money, you want to have a professional investment strategy to gain more money. But if you move from not much to a lot of money, maybe you think, Why I'm going to buy luxury car luxury boat. I'm going to and you're going to spend things which maybe The value of the terrorists maybe organized luxury parties etc. It doesn't last and you may remember I think that was a very famous footballer I think it was best I think George best who said a most of my money I use it on women and drugs and the rest I squandered it So So, you know, if you have a lot of money very quickly, you may not do make the best use of it.

57:52So, I think the challenge when you're very successful is to get your step back on the grass, is where do I want to go from there? Do we habituate less to certain things? Are there any categories of accumulation that we have in our life that we seem to be a little bit more resilient to this adaptation? So, it's a very good question. So habituation, once you reach a certain level of a comfortable life, which should be, you know, a lower middle class in the US, anything better what you observe is that people think they will give it, they will be much more happy or much happier if they get more. And actually, you don't.

58:34So happiness doesn't increase much. It doesn't increase within the country. And one likely reason is because within the country, you're able to compare yourself to others. So what we observe is that this doesn't increase between countries. So you take Americans now overall, for instance, and you look at the number of people who say they are happy or moderately happy. It's the same number as 1949. Now, I think about all the things that happened since 1949. People have fridges, they have like TV, color TV, etc. They have internet, things that whatever it happens, people say it's amazing, it's fantastic.

59:12But when you ask now, they don't feel happier. And that's something you see in most countries. When you look at countries, apart from the very poor countries, which they get sanitation, they get water, etc. If you're from a lower middle income country to a rich country, it's very flat. Happiness is very flat. So that is true. Nonetheless, at the bottom end, the office, which can improve life satisfaction. So if you move from being homeless to having a house, that improves in the long term your life satisfaction. That kind of locks it in in a more permanent way. Yeah, so one thing which is possible is that, you know, your head on its signals, if you think about the modern life that we are living, when we are food on the table, when we have like, you know, sanitation, water, that's a good life.

1:00:03I mean, oncicad didn't have that. So we are in the range of the good life, which in a way the basic signal that we can get, we can still know that we can do better, but we're really doing very well relative to the kind of things that on sister we're doing. But if you are in your life where you know your life is threatened because you don't have a home, your health is threatened because you don't have access to a good food or access or protection etc. That may still give you signals that you know that's not good from an evolutionary point of view. I think there's something where That's so interesting.

1:00:37So much of what we're doing with habituation in lower to like developed nations is chasing down better standards of living but not removing ourselves from things that could be model threats to us and maybe our brain is able to detect. Okay, there is you don't always have food on the table. You don't always have a safe place to sleep. You don't always have reliable water or whatever. Yeah, and if you if you get out from that, you lock in a particular. So the bottom levels of Maslow's hierarchy you've need. I've always thought this about the issues that many of us face. Am I actualizing my logos forward?

1:01:19Is this really me reaching my U -dimonia and making the most of my brief time? It's like, hey dude, an existential crisis is a pretty fucking luxurious possession to be in for all of human history until like 200 years ago. People were terrified of whether they'd make it to the next day. They thought that they were gonna get smited from above by a lightning bolt because they masturbated last night, or whatever it might be. Like they did just on this permanent, fearful world. And it's odd that, yeah, if you're asking yourself these deep questions about meaning, about fulfillment, about flourishing, about you dimonia, about reaching your goals, go, it suggests to me that much of the stuff that really matters, you would absolutely miss if it wasn't there, has been sorted.

1:02:09And that's why you're up here. It is no comfort. I'm aware it's no comfort because we have it you way. But I do think it's an important frame. No, no, exactly. I think you're right. And I have nonetheless. So all these vision is a bit depressing because it can be depressing. I don't know, I'm you know, can a man describe himself Daniel can a man the psychologist describe himself as a cheerful optimist a pessimist cheerful pessimist cheerful pessimist yeah I like that because you know you you don't tell yourself stories about how the world is you know you you take it as it is so it's a bit pessimistic but actually you can still be cheerful in your life so if you know I'm as a person to be cheerful and Daniel can a man was as well so anyway the the the thing I wanted to say about the habituation is that there's a positive aspect to it because I said it can be a bit depressing but there's a positive aspect to it is that the rest point of happiness where we come back to is not neutral and there's good reasons for it which we can come to it if you want but if you take a scale from one to ten and you ask people how happy you are people don't say I'm kind of neutral on average they won't say five, they would say seven.

1:03:25So people on average tend to be fairly cheerful, fairly fine with it. And you know, it's true, you go to people who don't have a high income and they say, well, yes, life is relatively fine, you know, it could be better, but they will give you an answer around seven. And you go how levels that people will tell you an answer. So we have a trade, but we don't have a trade to misery. We have a trade to a fairly fine level of happiness. So that's the positive news. I'd seen somewhere the status is a little less subject to habituation than some of the other elements in our life. You got any idea if that's true?

1:04:05Look, I think it's likely to be true. And maybe that explains why your happiness increases when you get richer within your country because your status increased within your country. So when the whole country gets richer, you move with the cohort of your country. So you get the fridge but everybody gets a fridge. So you have it to the fridge. But when you get the fridge and people don't have the fridge, you know, you're happy that you have the fridge and I really do all those who don't have it. So I think status makes sense because status is we are a very social species and status, you know, how well you're regarded by others in your community is a communication of success.

1:04:44So if you go to on sisters, in particular for males, like status would have much more conducive to find mates and to have hairs etc. So even if it's something not like food or sex or whatever, status it's likely that it is one thing when we feel what will primary was, that you feel good from experiencing status. And that's something that you know, curative neuroscientists also, maybe not necessarily all of them, but something which is accepted by some of them, some cognitive neuroscientists at stages as such, experiences are in increasing stages going to feel good. And that is going to be, status is super flexible.

1:05:27Like, and you can always keep increasing stages all across your life. So when you were talking about food, et cetera, in a way, once you can eat well, from an evolution point of view, there is no such a big difference between the food you get in a five -star Michelin restaurant. And the food you can buy from getting the supermarket. And that may seem shocking to a lot of people, but the fact is that the food in the supermarket is super safe relative to where the ancestors were freaking out, et cetera. You don't have to fight for the food. There is no bacteria or parasites in your food. It's warm, et cetera.

1:06:07So the food in the five -star Michelin restaurant, the biggest difference is not the number of calories, whether it's safe, etc. You know, in terms of fitness effect, it's not going to be very different. The difference is a status. It gives you status to be able to, because you have status, you can do that. It's a signal status to be able to eat in such a restaurant, etc. And so, while you can't increase all this stuff about the comfort of your life, you have a roof over your head, you have food, you have water, etc. Stages can keep increasing. You can keep relative to other being doing better and better.

1:06:45The sad thing about it though is that status is a zero -sum game. If he rises, it can only be won. Exactly. So as you rise in status, all those who are competing with you are relatively to you going down in status. And so it's, well, I'm just going to say, it's not something that you can, you know, you have utilitarianism tyrannism is this philosophy that you want to maximize their happiness in the country. And, for the least, if status is one of the key things where you can increase happiness of individuals, well, you can't increase the happiness of the country because status is those who have it, don't have it, it is a zero sum gap.

1:07:23So, you can't increase status of everybody. Okay, another huge tension that a lot of people seem to have to deal with is this relationship between happiness and a meaningful life. Is it attention? Is this a fake thing? What is there to know when it comes to useful definitions and differences between happiness and meaning? Look, I find it fascinating and once again, I think it's fascinating because we have these big questions. What is the meaning of life? What I mean to do? I mean, some people don't But you know, some people care, some people think, what should I do? What would make sense to my life, etc.

1:08:06Some people make big life decisions. You know, they go to foreign countries and work, etc. to do in poor countries, to dedicate the last to some causes, etc. So why do I have these feelings? And why don't we understand? Why are they kind of mysterious? And here again, we're on the thing where evolution gives us the feelings that guides and decisions for us to navigate the world. But evolution didn't need to tell us why we have them. And so part of the mystery is that because now we kind of try to think about why we have this, but we have not been given the tools because these tools, understanding why we have these feelings, is not in itself helpful.

1:08:49And I try, you know, I was saying before that you have a convergence between code give neuroscience and artificial intelligence and is exactly something in artificial intelligence if you program if you design a Computer program to do a task You don't need the computer program to know why it's doing the task So if you design a computer program to win at chess or to win at go, you know the game of go You don't need to tell the program. You know everything which is happening now is for you to win You just give this program the system of values, it expires these values to choose the next decision and it revises values depending on whether the outcome is above or below the expectations.

1:09:30And the program can be completely myopic. It ends up winning a chess. It has learned to win a chess, but it doesn't have a conscience saying, oh, my goal in life is to win a chess. But now imagine this program become self -aware and start thinking, what am I doing? What is my goal in life? Well, you know, you would have to find this stuff by itself because the programmer didn't need to put in the program the answer or everything which is happening is because you have been designed to win a chess and this is a simple and we have we have been designed by evolution to be successful and we express all these feelings for us to be successful but we have not been given the awareness about why we experience these feelings and so we're asking these big questions because we don't have the tools to naturally think about why we're doing that.

1:10:18So the thing about the meaning of life, whether these big questions, and I think there's a fairly simple answer, is that the hedonic feelings we have, they have to answer several types of questions. One question is right now, is my meal now good? Or is it not good? Should I stop it? Is it to breathe? Is it make me sick, etc.? You know, is this person I'm talking to a friendly person I want to continue the interaction with? Or is it a boring person I'm wasting my time or somebody who doesn't like me and I shouldn't say anything private because this person is going to go see about it, whatever. So you are asking all these questions and your head on the feelings right now, whether you feel that you are happy because the food you're eating is good or all you feel sympathy with somebody.

1:11:05All these feelings are helping you to guide you in the right now moment. Now, this is good, but a lot of success is going to be a bit of a larger span of time. Are you in the right setting, the stuff you're doing in your life, overall, is it good? So if I ask you, how satisfied are you with your life? You are going to think about what you're doing with your life in a bigger window, bigger time window. And you're not going just to think about, oh, is my meal good? Is this friend good? You'll think of the biggest scheme. You know, am I going somewhere in life, which is in line with what would be successful, which is like building maybe your standing in the community, finding a romantic partner, maybe raising your kids and seeing your kids grow, etc.

1:11:52So if you can see that this kind of stuff happening, you're more likely to experience this kind of life satisfaction. And what you can have, you can have a disconnect between pleasure and achieving these goals, because you can have a lot of pleasure in the short term, but they don't lead you to achieving these goals. Often achieving these long -term goals need for you to do some things which are costly now. So, you know, if you spend your time playing video games from 6 p .m. to 5 a .m., it may be very nice, but if I ask you six months later, are you happy with your life? You I enjoy what I do every day, that's what I'm doing.

1:12:33But I don't see how I'm going anywhere. Something is missing. It's missing is that you're not doing what's right for you to feel that you are progressing toward a successful life. And so when we think about the meaning of life, I think what's kicking in in your head is this kind of intuition about, am I in a right setting? Am I in the right progress, this right dynamic toward being successful in life? something which is meaningful is doing things where people are happy what I'm doing. So my standing in the community is increasing and I'm perceived as somebody nice and contributing to my community.

1:13:08I have friends, my family, my partner loves me, etc. This gives meaning because you think I'm doing things right. I'm moving forward in a right direction. This gives us kind of feelings. It seems like time is a really important contributor here that sort of a good life versus a pleasurable life is a conflict across time, short term versus long term. You've got this great, this gorgeous quote where you say much of life dissatisfaction results from evolutionary mismatches where short term hedonic signals conflict with long term ones. And it's just this tension, it's this tension between the two.

1:13:45I want to eat the cookie or smoke the cigarette or drink the beer today, but I don't want to deal with the fatness or the hangover Tomorrow and you know you scale this up over time the thing that's super interesting I have I've had this intuition for ages that certain people are predisposed to take more pleasure from meaning and other people are more predisposed to take more pleasure from enjoyment I think people find their way, they do in life the thing that gives them the best hedonic signals. So for me, I actually suck quite a bit at pleasure. Really fucking good at meaning. Like, I will, you know, bury myself for three months in the hopes that something will come out of that on the other side.

1:14:37Suck at pleasure, good at meaning. I have a lot of friends who are the opposite. And this was that famous, you may know this story better than me, but this famous conversation debate, friendly debate between Dan Gilbert and Daniel Kahneman, where Gilbert was saying that a good life could be one where you spend every hour for the remainder of your days laid on a lilo floaty in a pool with a cocktail. You said in retrospect and you look back, would that have, would you have considered a life well lived? Well, it doesn't matter because day to day your experience was just pleasure. I'm in a pool. This is nice.

1:15:09The cocktail tastes good. that, Kanaman said that, no, what you want is true happiness or true meaning in life comes from a life which in retrospect you're glad that you lived, right? And I think that, at least to me, this is my, again, another pet, Broseye's theory, which you'd feel free to tear apart. That I think that the more rumenative of a thinker that you are, the more you need to optimize to be carnivore, not to be Gilbert. Whereas I have friends who are able to just fucking be, they don't care about where they're going with this thing. They're not asking about whether it's this deeper contribution in the same way.

1:15:48And maybe they're going to have a middle -life crisis at 55 and they're going to come back to me and go, dude, should have buried myself for three months, you were, or whatever, but not that I told them to change their ways or whatever. But I just get this set like to tie all of that together. This tension over time, short term, hedonic signals, conflicting with long -term ones, but I think that our predisposition, the frame that we enter the world with and the way that we're rewarded individually based on genetics and experience, I think it disposes us to focus on one more than the other, and I think that this is why one size fits all solutions to this.

1:16:21Most people will lie somewhere in the middle, but there's some people that are out on the tails. I have no idea what percentile I am. I could be 99, I don't I am, but I'm definitely toward the long -term signals. Like they are more salient to me. They're more powerful to me compared to the short -term ones. That makes sense. That makes total sense. I like how you frame it as being focused on meaning, being focused on pleasure. And we have always to make these choices, pleasure right now versus later. And all the sessions had to do it as well. A lot of cooperation, basic cooperation decision is being nice to other people.

1:17:02Sometimes you can take advantage of people, now there's benefit now, but what you do is that you lose that goodwill tomorrow and they won't help you when you need their help. So even our ancestors in very different settings, had to see straight ups. But something which characterized our modern world is that these straight ups have become way outside of the kind of range of we were facing before because all time horizon as Increased massively first or life expectancy has increased If you compare to even 200 years ago the life expectancy a double That's one thing, but also the time horizon is increased because now we have a lot of institutions which Give us the time to Invest in the future now we have banks so sometimes banks go bankrupt, but very often most of them they don't so you have this crazy thing which you can put money in the bank at 20 and get money back at 60.

1:17:59When I said bank, it's all the financial system. Now, you think about these ancestors were not designed, you know, they were not facing this kind of decisions. So when you are 20, 60 is like way out. So thinking about making these decisions, we don't have the intuitions. We don't have the adonic feelings to make these decisions. And when you think about now, you know, think about, But I don't remember when, what was the age of Alexander when he conquered his big empire, but he was super young, I think it was less than 25, I mean like this. And think about people at 25 now. They are often considered still like kids, right?

1:18:36We have these things where we become in a way ready to enter the world much later and it takes a lot of time to achieve leadership positions and high position, etc. So you need a lot of investment. You need to work hard at school when you're 15. you need to work hard in early position when you're 25, etc. to invest to be successful. If you want to be successful, I say you need is if you want to be successful. And the thing is we this requires a lot of postponing of enjoyment. Maybe a less video games, less eating nice stuff and less holidays and more. And so I don't think we have necessarily the this is a big challenge we face.

1:19:17And a lot of unhappiness that we observe is, I think, comes from this tension. Is that the world offers us a lot of ways of being happy now. You have at the kick of a button, you have, in fact, for young boys, like a lot of video guesses, takes a lot of the time, et cetera. And it's designed by psychologists to be exactly tapping to the stuff which is pre -tanned stages, which they like and they enjoy, etc. So you have all that, but then you ask people later, are you happy with your life? Well, the problem is that all these very nice things that you're doing the short term, and that you have been seduced to doing the short term, they have not led you to maybe go the steps for you to progress in life.

1:20:04And so you have this mismatch between what you said, you know, this feeling for meaning and this feeling for pleasure. and in a way the prime of the modern world is that it has designed so much appealing things which are pleasurable in the present and we want to burn them, but it has increased the time horizon that we face and increasing with the importance of the world of waiting for them. That's so interesting. I love that. So what about the classic question, the meaning of life? What do you think that misses? Given your evolutionary lens, given your insights into sort of neuroscience? Because it seems like what people are looking for is something outside of life.

1:20:47Why is life here? Give me something that transcends the thing that I'm asking the question about. Right, so I think you're right that a lot of times when we think what's the meaning of life, people wants to see that there's something objective out there which gives sense to your life. beyond your subjective experience. So for instance, if I'm working in an orphanage in a poor country, helping kids learn things, I think I'm doing something good and that gives sense next to my life. Now, if you believe in some metaphysical reality, like for instance religion, if you're religious and you believe there's a god or civil spiritual entities is out there, who gives you a mission to do in life.

1:21:39And I guess that's can be the meaning of your life. It's to follow these goals given by your religion. Personally, I don't think that my point of view is purely naturalistic. So I'm just going to look at naturalistic explanation. If you don't have any metaphysical explanation, the fact is these feelings that we want something objective to give sense, to give meaning to a life, it's just a feeling because you know the only thing that we have is our subjective experience. And so I think that there is nothing out there, there is a denet evolutionary psychologist called Skyhook, you know, to have an explanation which is a hook which comes from the sky and holds your theory.

1:22:23So if you don't have a Skyhook like a religious explanation, the only explanation you can start with is that we have these feelings, they come from a brain, they've been designed to help us make good decisions. And the feelings of meaning have to come from the view that you know you are going somewhere in your life and it has to be connected with the kind of thing which help us to stop being successful. And it does mean so some of it often is linked with being very prosocial. So I think people often experience meaning where you know they're doing they're doing good towards other people. And I think it makes sense because investing in the future, as I said before, often being cooperative is investing in the future.

1:23:05So it doesn't pay right now to do a lot of good things to other people, but you build goodwill and a good reputation and that's a health -rebeing success from the future. And I think that we would have the Aedonic system helping us to take that into consideration. And because it's far in the future, in a way, this feeling that we're doing something good is bringing the benefit from the future in the present. And so we can, I'm not saying that we're consciously calculating anything. Oh, you know what? I'm going to help my neighbor today. I don't really care about my neighbor, but by doing that, when I will need my neighbor help, you know, I can ask, no, we don't do that.

1:23:49We help our neighbor and we feel good about it. anyway. But what it does is it also gives us good will. So when we need it, we can get it. And so I think that lots of this feeling of good will of sort of meaning that we experience when we're doing good things is because it would have helped our ancestors to actually be good co -op writers and to care about being nice with other people, contributing to the community, rising and standing as being perceived as an altruist and positive person, a trustworthy person. So I think that's why we experience because it's kind of meanings. But if you don't have a sky hook, it all has to come from these feelings which are designed to help us being successful.

1:24:28I suppose, yeah, you're right. If all the happiness and meaning are a signals produced by the brain to indicate if we're on a path that's aligned towards success, but the path gets calibrated by an ancestral past, there's huge opportunity for mismatch now in the modern world. Yeah, exactly. No, no, and I think that's, you know, you see, for us a big topic now is the challenge faced by young boys in the modern world. Young boys, like for evolution, are a matter in later than girls. And so they are not necessarily ready for the kind of demanding pushback of pleasure that school is requiring. School is requiring to be systematic, to be, you know, not jumping around, listening to the teacher, doing your homework, etc.

1:25:24For years and years and years, and the rewards are very far in the future. And what happens is that we see now with decreasing proportion of young men going to university being successful, etc. because the world offered them all these quick, reward accessible online. And as pushed back, the schedule to become successful. As I say, Alexander, you know, must have been riding a horse with his father and fighting before he was 20. That doesn't happen anymore. Before your 20, you're still a kid in modern world. So this is a clear mismatch. And, you know, the perspective I'm proposing is not a normative perspective.

1:26:07I'm not saying you should do that because there is no normative principles, philosophical principles. I'm just saying this is the way we work. But what I, what it can say is that because there is a mismatch, it can give the warning, but maybe if you don't think enough about the future, be careful because the modern society is kind of can entrap you with all these nice pleasures it's offering you now, about you when you're young, and it's not going necessarily to help you do the right step for you to be happy when you're 35. Lionel Page, ladies and gentlemen, Lionel, let's bring this one home. Dude, you are fucking awesome.

1:26:46I love your writing. I'm so glad that you're able to speak as well as you write. You are now officially on the rotation of guests. I'm going to hassle every couple of months to bring on. I love it. Where people want to check out more of this stuff that you write. Where should they go? Well, I've got a book which is here, optimally irrational, nicely placed. So it's about, you know, if you're interested in psychology and behavior, I highly recommend that you check it out. And otherwise, as you said, I have my sub -stack, I kind of continue the same name, optimally irrational, and I continue talking about psychology, of an evolutionary perspective, and game theory, perspective, economic perspective, and yeah, the last post whereabouts, happiness and the incoming ones are going to be about collisional psychological theory which I think is super interesting as well.

1:27:36Good. Until next time, I appreciate you. Thank you Chris. See you.