layout: post

title: Stumbling on Happiness

date: 2016-09-02 00:00

categories:

- book-a-day

After reading _[The Elements of Style][eos]_ yesterday, this book is at the other end of the spectrum. Instead of just telling me the gist of what I need to know, Daniel goes in depth describing the research and psychology that create a structure around what we *just* refer to as **Happiness**.

[eos]: /book/stumbling-on-happiness.html

I am sure the research is insightful, but it isn't what I am looking for. The bones and structure of the book helped me to better understand and look at _happiness_ but I don't need to know the details. Having just finished Season 2 of [Invisibilia][invis], I appreciated the way Lulu, Alix, and Hanna constructed the information and research into _stories_.

[invis]: http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/478429275/invisibilia-season-2-trailer?showDate=2016-05-20

Daniel opens each chapter with a quote from Shapespeare; if _that's_ your jam, then this book is for you.

Derek Sivers, who should always be trusted more than me, gave the book a [10/10][10].

[10]: https://sivers.org/book/StumblingOnHappiness

**Am I going to read more of it?** _No_

**Does the book spark joy?** _No_

* PART I - Prospection

>> The act of looking forward in time or considering the future.

> ...the human brain's greatest achievement...conscious experience.

> In Part II, "Subjectivity," I will tell you about the science of happiness.

> In Part III, "Realism," I will tell you about the first shortcoming: Imagination works so quickly, quietly, and effectively that we are insufficiently skeptical of its products.

> In Part IV, "Presentism," I will tell you about the second shortcoming: Imagination's products are ... well, not particularly imaginative, which is why the imagined future often looks so much like the actual present.

> In Part V, "Rationalization," ...If we have trouble foreseeing future events, then we have even more trouble foreseeing how we will see them when they happen.

> ...in Part VI, "Corrigibility," I will tell you why illusions of foresight are note easily remedied by personal experience or by the wisdom we inherit from our grandmothers.

> ...I hope you will understand why most of us spend so much of our lives turning rudders and hoisting sails, only to find that Shangri-la isn't what and where we thought it would be.

* PART II - Subjectivity

>> The fact that experience is unobservable to everyone but the person having it.

* PART III - Realism

>> The belief that things are in reality as they appear to be in the mind.

> Even though we are aware in some vaguely academic sense that our brains are doing the filling-in trick, we can't help but expect the future to unfold with the details we imagine.

* PART IV - Presentism

>> The tendency for current experience to influence one's views of the past and the future.

* PART V - Rationalization

>> The act of causing something to be or to seem reasonable.

>> For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

>>

>> — Shakespear, Hamlet Prince of Denmark

* PART VI - Corrigibility

>> Ability to be being corrected, reformed, or improved

* Afterword

> Most of us make at least three important decisions in our lives; where to live, what to do, and with whom to do it...Making these decisions is such a natural part of adulthood that it is easy to forget that we are among the first human beings to make them.

> How are we to make these choices?

> Daniel Bernoulli claimed...that the wisdom of any decision could be calculated by multiplying the **probability** that the decision will give us what we want by the **utility** of getting what we want.