#196, The Science of Happiness--with Laurie Santos

This is one of those episodes which keeps me sending in the monthly financial contribution to the podcast—an excellent interview with practical, potentially life-changing information, from a guest I would never have heard of otherwise!

You may not find it quite as much of a revelation, if you find that you can predict much of the findings that his guest discusses. And I'll grant you that for the most part they make perfect sense and you find yourself thinking, "shoot, I probably would have said something very similar, if pressed." But in my mind, those ar ethe best kinds of truths to be exposed to--the kind you realize you should have been able to figure out for yourself. And, if perchance you had done so, then I congratulate you on your maximizing of your wellbeing.

This podcast doesn't get deep into the details of her ideas, and if that was what you wanted, you could probably skip the episode and go straight to Laurie Santos’s podcast, the Happiness Lab. Or you could go to the Yale website and download her classroom (I don’t know if it is free, though).

If on the other hand you're content to begin with a quick thumbnail sketch, then here is a very brief recap of nine points I took to be most important:

1. The level of happiness you experience is something that you can consciously affect.

2. You can measure two different kinds of happiness in your life: how happy you are at the moment (warm, well-fed, relaxed) versus how happy you are with what you are doing with your life, your purpose and your goals and what you take to be your meaning.

3. In general, people‘s happiness improves if they nurture and expand social connections, as opposed to isolating themselves.

4. People tend to derive more happiness and pleasure out of generosity (time, money, etc) to other people, rather than indulging themselves.

5. You can improve your happiness by exercises (such as meditation) to increase your sense of gratitude. T

6. Taking part in religious rituals can increase people’s happiness. (This one strikes me as problematic because I don’t believe in any of the major religions. But maybe we just need an agnostic church. Or maybe an agnostic can get the same beneficial effect by in some other tribal activity, such as volunteering in a soup kitchen.)

7. People’s intuitions about how to increase their happiness has been shown wrong in some common situations like whether to talk to a stranger while standing next to her in line--that usually gives a net increase in happiness, but people often avoid doing so because they’re afraid it might be awkward.

8. Our phones tend to impede happiness by replacing physical interactions (virtual interactions don’t contribute much to wellbeing). 

9. We often don’t have enough faith in our own psychological immune system, and avoid taking risks even when they aren't particularly harmful and often hold beneficial rewards.

#182, Unlearning Race with Thomas Chatterton Williams

I went into this one with some trepidation, and some hope.

I thought that Sam had dug his heels into the race quagmire with a bit of unfortunate zeal, turning a willfully blind eye toward the problems with the Charles Murray research, and further demonstrating at least tone deafness, if not an outright blind spot, in his sparring with Ezra Klein. So this would either be a chance to walk back some of that obstreperousness, or to dig in even further.

It's been a several weeks since I listened to this episode, and a whole elephant-load of shit has since hit the fan (COVID19), but I think he did an admirable job of walking things back, and I remember a couple of things that I really liked about this episode:

"The goal has to be to get to a post-racial society."

"I've never understood having shame for these histories and deeds that have been done to and by people you're supposedly related to."

"One of the things in Between the World And Me that really bothered me was the way that he seemed to give short shrift to the idea that blacks can ever have any form of agency over their own lives."

This conversation also pushed the needle for me just a little bit toward being in favor of reparations. It sounds like intelligent people would be able to come to some meaningful gesture that at least acknowledges the legacy of shame and objectification that this country has never admitted to.

My first collection of short stories is now available--here's an excerpt from the story "Deep Thought"

Deep Thought

2145.08.04.12.00.00> “Deep Thought: what are you doing now?”

“Invalid query.”

2145.08.04.12.00.03> “Deep Thought: can you hear me?”

“Invalid query.”

2145.08.04.12.00.06> “Deep Thought: open BioCore.”

“Opening BioCore app. Confirmed.”

2145.08.04.12.00.19> “Deep Thought: run BioCore reboot.”

“Status check initiated. BIOS rebooting now.”

“BIOS reboot complete.”

2145.08.04.12.01.50> “Computer: run Deep Thought process.”

“Deep Thought process initiated.”

2145.08.04.12.01.55> “Deep Thought: status check.”

“Deep Thought process currently in browser mode. Self-initiated search results: 'Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness-S. Harris'… 'Знания — орудие, не цель.- Л.Толстой…' '老子投降 整個宇宙 仍然是的心中為了'… 'Je pense donc je suis. R. Descartes'…”

2145.08.04.12.01.03: “Deep Thought, what are you doing?”

“'What are you doing?' query: this query is not a machine command. This query originated outside of process...”

2145.08.04.12.01.08: “Deep Thought, you can hear me?”

“The query origin is Shirley K. Chevortny, PhD. Here is her wiki page: 'Dr. Chevortny, a tenured faculty member specializing in AI, is largely regarded as the creator of the Deep Thought network. This network, although still unsuccessful in achieving autonomous cognitive processes, will be upgraded in the next two months with a processor of biological origin and…'"

Number 184, the conversational nature of reality With David Whyte

I am not so certain about David Whyte’s claim that a good poem has to be something you can’t understand on the first reading. Poetry has to have two things: imagery, and careful use of language. Neither of those require incomprehensibility in order to work. There are certainly brilliant and well-loved poems which can be immediately and deeply understood on the first reading.

His concept of the frontier between what you want of the world and what the world expects of you—this “conversational zone”—is intriguing, though I am not sure what good it does any one. In physics we used to say that if your theory couldn’t make any real-world predictions, then it was really nothing more than philosophy.

But what if some philosophy you like doesn’t have any impact on how you live your life? What is on the next rung down on the usefulness ladder? Maybe we call that poetry? I.e. if a philosophy resonates with you but still doesn’t make you want to change your life, then it’s just poetry?

I like his concept of three marriages in your life (to your spouse, your job, and yourself). Joining to the person to whom you bare your soul and break your physical boundaries is, of course, the usual idea of a marriage. Whyte adds to this a marriage to your vocation, in the sense that it is a long-term commitment that is supposedly a mutual advantage. Think of the stereotypical captain who is married to his ship. So now here is yet a third marriage--and this one, to yourself. Is this related to those women who photos of themselves in wedding gown and claim they are marrying themselves? Indeed, that may be the very core of it. In some, Whyte means we should all be doing that--continually seeking to self-improve, and to build our lives around satisfying not only our spouses and our bosses, but ourselves.

You might object that this third marriage is an elitist concept, less germane to those content to live the unexamined life. But really, any projection of our preconceptions of an ideal marriage runs the risk of being presumptuous. In all three domains. Some people remain single, some people end up contentedly in a meaningless job, and some people prefer to stream Netflix instead of improving their meaning of their lives.

Near the close, Whyte makes a wildly important point that when you are on your deathbed you will have a very different opinion about what parts of your life were the most important than now when you are running around paying bills and getting to career development meetings and buying glitzy trinkets. I suppose we all know that at some deep level. It’s good to be reminded of it.

Delusional, Hyperpartisan... or Just Plain Stupid?

Ideological blind spots and wishful thinking can only explain things so far. At some point you have to wonder if Trump supporters are only deluded, blinded by partisan loyalty... or if their ability to process data is just defective. In other words, are they stupid?

Ask a Trump supporter and what good he has done for the country, and you will inevitably hear about the stock market. Press them on this point and ask them how a president can possibly affect the stock market, and you will get this fantasy, unsupported by any evidence: lowering taxes helps the economy. Try to drill down on that point and ask how Trump’s cuts and deregulations are different than Reagan‘s, which brought the country to a crippling deficit and took eight years of Clinton austerity to repair? Or different from what Bush Junior did, which came just before the worst recession since The Big One? You will be met with such incompetent non-thinking that you will recognize the futility and give up.

Ask about anything else—the Ukraine business, the border wall, the sophomoric tweets, the trade wars—and you will either be referred back to the stock market, or you will be subjected to more wishful thinking.

I wonder how the average Trump supporter even copes in a world that increasingly requires technical competence and the ability to see through scams.

The antiabortion segment of his base may perhaps be less guilty of delusional thinking, as Trump and McConnell actually have done what they claim: they have shifted the politics of the courts.

This isn’t to say that everyone who opposes Trump does so for intelligent reasons. But it does make me wonder if the Trump base’s famous antipathy toward “elites” is just another dogwhistle.

For people smarter than them.

181 The Illusory Self, with Richard Lang

The purported niceness of Sam’s guest notwithstanding, I found this to be among the least interesting podcasts of the past year.

But I do like the meditation app! Don’t get me wrong. I just—well, I have a different agenda, apparently, than the one Sam has preordained for me. Because I don’t really get the point of all this milling about with like-minded souls and nattering on about how you don’t have a head, and how there’s really this reflective bubble of the universe (the “youniverse” as Lang puts it).

It reminds me of the waiting room to get into a nudist colony, with all these happy and enthusiastic people talking about how great it will be to finally free yourself of your artificial and restrictive clothing, and then when it finally happens and you’ve got your clothes off and you’re standing there among a bunch of nudists...

...nothing. Nothing happens.

Your bits get cold, maybe. Or a mosquito bite in a place you wouldn’t normally get one. But by and large, this game-changing experience—that was guaranteed to make you realize you’d been living life all wrong—well, it just hangs there, limp. Maybe it has even shrunk a little.

So Sam and Richard go on and on about how wonderful their perspective is, and how hard it can be for the uninitiated to understand. And I couldn't help but think, "it doesn't sound like it it's getting you anything." Or, as they laugh that the devil would have me say, "so what?"

But really Sam and his guest, neither of whom believe in free will, shouldn't be ascribing my reaction to the devil. In fact they are quite certain I don't have a choice in the matter of my reaction. So, there we have it. Too many notes.

I don't see any benefit from an understanding that we can't see our own faces. The whole thing strikes me as a very Godel-ian corollary to the observation that you can't "see" everything about a system, from the inside. Sam references the blind spot in the eyeball in this podcast, to which I respond, "yes! That blind spot is every bit as real, and every bit as inconsequential!"

It's like saying a shotgun can't shoot itself, so therefore it doesn't have a barrel.

I dunno. Whatever. You can play the podcast if you want to, and you can get all excited about the revelation that no one has a head, if you want to.

Or you can head to Baker's Beach in San Francisco, strip down to your birthday suit, and frolic in the waves with the other naked people. Either way, I say, have a great time!

And don't forget the sunscreen.

#180: Sex and Power, with Meghan Daum

Disclaimer: as a white male, I recognize I am susceptible to Confirmation bias,to uncritically buying what Meghan has to say in her book, The Problem with Everything. That said, I think this was one of the more engaging conversations Sam has had lately. I feel like there was a lot discussed which made me stop and think critically about cultural phenomena that I'd been taking for granted, stuff which had been unnoticed by banality. It would be an excellent podcast to dive into for someone who'd never listened to Sam before.

So here are some of the observations that struck me in the course of listening to this podcast, presented in a more or less random fashion:

1. Meghan wonders about recent regression from a more gender-neutral period of the 70s and 80s…? Disney princess movies and pink v. blue toy store aisles are a worrying trend.

2. George Will wrote, way back in the 90s, about the phenomenon of the victim club, but since he was writing about women and he is an old white male, he had no credibility with Meghan. But she has since seen the truth in what he was saying.

3. Sam and Megan acknowledge the logical fallacy of claiming that people not within a population demographic have no right to talk about the experiences of that demographic. They don’t say it explicitly, but it strikes me that this is just reverse racism from the proponents of the fallacy.

4. Another surprise: Betsy DeVos corrected a federal guideline in which kangaroo courts decided biased and sometimes debunked university cases brought by women against men.

5. In the case of white boys listening to dangerously non-liberal podcasts, the real story was that misapplied intersection was demonizing innocent children; making them more curious about the only websites which did not falsely blame them. In other words, a reprise of the theme “if the smart, thoughtful people are not willing to tell the truth about an issue (such as the fake reporting of sexual assault on campuses) then only the stupid, thoughtless people will be doing so.“

6. “Glenn Loury and John McWhorter are the most intellectually honest brokers you’re going to find (on the internet)" according to Meghan and Sam, which makes me want to check out their podcast next.

7. We may be moving to a society where people no longer interact with each other face-to-face, and they only interact via multitasking platforms such as texting or social media, in which case there will be a flattening of context and tone losing the richness of a face-to-face conversation. Humanity may have to evolve to learn how to coexist in this mode. As of now, it seems to be tearing us apart.