My Old Blog

About a month ago I made a post about this book I was going to buy about the science of happiness.

Unlike most things that I say I am going to do, I actually did this one and am about 100 pages or so into it.

He makes an interesting analogy about optical illusions and our ability to predict our own happiness.

We largely trust what we see, yet with optical illusions our eyes fool us. That isn’t so much the problem as the fact that even after we know that our eyes are fooling us…..we can’t stop ourselves from seeing it. We’ll be fooled every single time, forever.

Well….it turns out our brain plays its own version of optical illusions with our memories and imagination. And even if we know the rules (which the book outlines) we will still consistently misjudge how we felt about the past, and what we will feel about the future. And like optical illusions, we’ll keep making the mistake even if we know about it.

So….if I will always have limited success at predicting today what actions to take to make my future self happy…..perhaps I should read a book on brainwashing? I’ll hypontize myself into thinking I’m happy. I wonder if that works?

Another point he makes is that there is no such thing as “someone who says they’re happy but actually isn’t; they just don’t realize what happiness really is.” Although it isn’t quite so straightforward, in the new science of happiness, for the most part, if someone reports they are happy, we have to take their word for it…….what other recourse do we have?

If I can just convince myself that I am happy, then it won’t matter so much which poor choices I make with respect to my future happiness. I don’t buy so much the “stupid, but happy” hypothesis anyway. I think if you were to ask those who are described as “stupid, but happy” their response would be, “Really?? I’m stupid for being happy? I think you’ve got it mixed up. Does intelligence then make you sad? If so, what good is being smart?”

More to come on this….after I get around to reading the rest of the book (which I was warned in the preface will not teach me any secrets to being happy).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.