Nancy Etcoff on the surprising science of happiness

MILF

MILK

There IS a word for taking happiness from the happiness of others (mentioned about 7:50 in)!

The word is: Compersion.

It hasn't made it into all the dictionaries yet, so let's get it there.

I think happiness is achieved subconsciously, so if we try and see what makes us happy and try and do it and do it all the time and thinking about how we are going to be happy then we will never be happy. Don't try to be happy, feel happy.

This was pointless. She was rambling.

Your comment is pointless.

What you say is undoubtably correct, but the problem is that these laws apply to longer living organisms than us. What i mean is that, if we could survive for a million years we would be able to be discussing patterns through time, but for us, these string-theory level of default can only be translated as random dynamic changing...

Seems like I wasn't clear and you have a few right points in your statement. I didn't say that since we cannot parametrize something, is sheer chance and randomness. NO. I said that nature is a multifuctorial system. An open thermodynamic system (if you want me to speak in terms of physics) that involves a lot of different parameters; many of them not stable, and also involves a lot of stochastic events. So you can't describe evolution with deterministic notion.

Still, we are able to give a prediction, with a considerable amount of error, of which will be the fate of a creature in the evolutionary time, within a predefined environment.

It is projection of human insecurity into scientific theory to say that "if I cannot fully describe, model, and predict something, it must involve chance." It is a similar projection when physicists fly in the face of the law of conservation to imagine the universe is infinite. It must have an infinite history, but a finite sum of matter and energy. What exists must have always in some shape or form because neither can something come from nothing, nor can something become nothing.