Happiness — Podcast — Beautiful Illusions

Darron and Jeff talk about the seemingly ubiquitous and pervasive dissatisfaction with modern life that they experience day to day, and try to identify some possible root causes for the collective ennui. They discuss their failed attempt to record an episode about this topic and the emotional difficulty of winter time, the relationship between true lack of material hardship and serious life risk and overall happiness, how modern technological changes mess with our biology, how a cultural and economic focus on individuals and maximizing our preferences makes us less able to deal with situations where we are unable to maximize these preferences and more prone to negativity bias, and how the greatly expanded and almost infinite comparison set of things and experiences we are exposed to through the internet and social media impacts our relative happiness.

Notes:

3:33 - Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson
4:51 - See the entry for “Seasonal Affective Disorder” from John Hopkins Medicine
6:38 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 25 - “Living the Dream” from 2022
8:14 - See the “Hygiene hypothesis” Wikipedia entry
13:42 - See ideas related to the pace of major cultural and technological shifts popularized in Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (1970)
15:50 - See “Calorie-free sweeteners can disrupt the brain’s appetite signals” from USC’s Keck School of Medicine (2025)
22:30 - See “The semi-satisfied life” from Aeon about Arthur Schopenhauer’s thoughts on happiness
24:59 - Watch the classic Simpson’s clip “You could flash fry a buffalo in 40 seconds”
29:30 - See the “Habituation” Wikipedia entry
28:40 - See “AI and the Human Condition” from the Stratechery Substack, which contains the Louis C.K. clip “Everything is Amazing…and Nobody is Happy”

Jeff and Darron debut a new episode format for the show, which is something they hope will be more manageable while still maintaining the spirit in which they began this endeavor 3 years ago. Starting with this episode many of the new releases will feature shorter, relatively unplanned conversations that build on some of the ideas they've explored in their first 24 episodes, as opposed to the typical longer format. Rather than doing a lot of prior research and working off extensive quote-laden outlines, they will discuss whatever might be rattling around in one or both of their minds in the days leading up to recording. Today they riff on the phrase “living the dream” as they try to figure out what this statement might mean in our modern context.

Notes:

7:28 - See “Negativity Bias” (The Decision Lab) and the abstract of “Not all emotions are created equal: The negativity bias in social-emotional development” (Psychological Bulletin, 2008)
8:52 - For the 2021-2022 school year the average teacher salary in Connecticut was just over $79,000, which was the 5th highest in the nation. The average starting salary for a Connecticut teacher is $47,447 and the average top salary is $95,823. For comparison, the 2021 median household income in the United States was just under $71,000. On a related note, an oft-cited 2010 study by noted psychologist Daniel Kahneman et. al found that while emotional well-being does appear to rise with income this effect peaks at around $75,000, which is actually under the average teacher salary in Connecticut. Although this has been somewhat disputed by a more recent study by Wharton School of Business Senior Fellow Matthew Killingsworth, who was actually trying to confirm the 2010 Kahneman study, and found that increasing income above $75,000 continues to increase experienced well-being - that higher earners are happier in part due to an increased sense of control over life, as more money manifests itself as more choices over how to live life. Notably though, according to Killingsworth, he found that while increasing income does appear to increase happiness, even beyond $75,000, overall income is still only a modest determinant of happiness. For more see “Teacher Salary Benchmarks” (National Education Association), “Ranking all 50 states on highest teacher pay shows the pinch of inflation” (District Administration, 2022), “Connecticut Teacher Income” (Teach Connecticut), “Income in the United States: 2021” (United States Census Bureau), “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010), “Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021), and “Money matters to happiness—perhaps more than previously thought” (Penn Today, 2021)
21:00 - See “Positive attitude toward math predicts math achievement in kids” (Stanford Medicine, 2018)
21:24 - See “A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain” (Scientific American, 2011) and the “Embodied cognition” Wikipedia entry
22:20 - See “What is the FISH! Philosophy?”
27:20 - See “The Bright and Dark Side of Gossip for Cooperation in Groups” (Frontiers in Psychology, 2019)
28:05 - See “How to Respond to Negativity” (Harvard Business Review, 2012)
28:19 - Toxic positivity (Wikipedia)