 Hello, can everyone hear me? Yes. All right. Let's get started So Thomas Jefferson said that everyone has a right to pursue it Ambrose beer said that we get it by contemplating the misery of our neighbors and Bob Ross said that we should paint it onto little trees I'm so delighted to be here today at AHS talking to y'all about happiness. My name is Alex Baya and and So a lot of people have said a lot of different things about happiness and here's what we're going to look at today So first I'm going to give us a helpful philosophical distinction that will kind of sharpen up our thinking about happiness then I want to talk about the connection between happiness and health which is especially pertinent to all of us and After that I want to talk about one sort of obstacle to happiness one scary obstacle to happiness Which is cognitive bias and then I want to say something about how we can sort of fuse empirical psychology and ancestral health to understand happiness better and Maybe if we're lucky maybe be a little bit happier Okay, so here's an important and helpful distinction. We can talk about happiness as a state of mind aka psychological happiness or we can talk about happiness as a life that goes well aka what you might call well-being or Flourishing so in the first sense happiness is something that's subjective it concerns a mental state To be happy is just for things to beat to be a certain way to me subjectively In the second sense, right? It's about value. It's about Fundamentally what is good for a person so to say that someone is happy in that sense is to say that they're flourishing Or their life is going well. It's a value judgment So how do we use happiness or happiness in natural language? Well, we use it in both ways So I might say Jared is so happy right now That's something about his mental state or I might say Jared lives an interesting and happy life That's kind of a value judgment about how he's living a life of flourishing or well-being Things are going well for him So there's this kind of mistake that people make sometimes to assume that happiness must be one Particular thing we don't have to make that mistake So here's a nice thought experiment that will help us a little bit There are these super-duper neuropsychologists that have designed this experience machine that can give you any Experience that your heart desires so you can hook up to the machine and it'll simulate any experience whatsoever You can hook up and have an experience of skiing the Alps and winning a gold medal writing a great novel Flying a spaceship to Mars or you could do something really lame So the point is you're not really doing these things. You're just experiencing them, right? You're there in the machine having this experience and Subjectively, it's totally indistinguishable from really doing these things But of course you're not really doing these things. You're just hooked up to the machine So let's assume that these super-duper neuropsychologists could give you whatever experiences you wanted for the rest of your life Would you how many of you just raise your hand if you would plug into the experience machine for the rest of your life? Any anyone brave you can have any life you want absolutely no one at all would plug into the experience machine Okay, so here's something we might learn from that little thought experiment you responded just the way that I wanted you to So write happiness in that first sense is distinct from happiness in that second we can be Psychologically very happy right we can be in some mental state And we wouldn't say that we're necessarily flourishing when we're there in the machine We have that great sense of wow, you know, I just won the Nobel Prize But we wouldn't say life is going well for you because you're just a blob hooked up to a machine The other thing you might take away from that is we might care about more than just happiness It's not the only thing that matters in life, although it does matter So finally one thing to note about it happiness is something that we can say it has intrinsic value It's not just a means to an end if someone says to us some cranky person says you're happy. So what why is that good? That just kind of a daft thing to say right That person is just cranky probably Okay, so in case you still don't care why health lovers should love happiness So it's been shown convincingly happier people live longer and have better health So there's this really interesting research that's been done by Ed Deener and others He's a positive psychologist and he's shown pretty convincingly to my mind that happiness actually causes longevity and happiness actually protects against illness So in his studies happiness means life Satisfaction optimism and experiencing a lot of positive emotions. And so in these studies He looks at a couple of different kinds. He looks at an observational study where you take a group of people Of similar ages and similar levels of health at baseline You follow them through life and you see that the ones that are happier live longer And they also have less illness and then the other type of study looks at what we know about how positive mental states actually affect physiology and they impact physiology in various Helpful ways and so when you combine that evidence together you get pretty strong evidence of those two things This is pretty interesting having a lot of happiness adds at least as many years to your life as does quitting smoking So according to Veenhoven the evidence that happiness extends life is even stronger than the evidence that obesity shortens it That's pretty surprising. It's pretty strong. Okay. Here's something that's not surprising when we're in poor health That's obviously going to rob us of happiness, right when you're very ill You experience more negative emotions You're more preoccupied with your own problems and you have less time to enjoy life's pleasures, so Health and happiness. What's the connection the causal arrow goes both ways health causes happiness happiness causes health That's why I think ancestral health approach is very promising Right because it offers us the self-reinforcing spiral of better happiness and better health It says eat a variety of plants and animals Manage your stress sleep well move and be happier and healthier. That's a good thing Okay, let's look at one big big scary Frightening obstacle to happiness cognitive bias So it turns out that human brains are better at learning from negative or bad experiences than they are at learning From positive or good experiences. We might call this negativity bias So we spend more of our cognitive resources and more of our attention on things that harm us than on things that help us Here's one example of that. We more quickly recognize negative angry fearful facial expressions and we pay more attention to them That's just one example. Here's another interesting example Loss aversion. So this one is this one is pretty pretty crazy when you really think about it So we actually prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains So to most people experiencing a loss of a hundred dollars causes more pain than a gain of a hundred dollars causes Pleasure right so we're more people will expend more effort They'll expend all this irrational effort to save five dollars, but they won't expend it to earn five dollars Which when you think about it, it's just it's just kind of crazy These are just two ways of illustrating this orientation that our brains have towards harmful negative things towards losses So as neuropsychologist Hansen says the soil of your brain is more fertile for weeds than flowers Why do we have negativity bias here's one idea so the womb of our brain which is our ancestral past was a very brutal and unforgiving place in the ancestral past one of our hunter-gatherer ancestors faced a very high cost of Misperceiving a dangerous situation right if our hunter-gatherer hears something behind him and you know Doesn't turn around or maybe just says no check it out later That's probably not going to be a good thing that might result in death Okay, on the other hand the cost of misperceiving something beneficial might be a lost meal, but it usually wasn't death So some people are skeptical of these evolutionary explanations to them. I say ho hum It's interesting. I find it plausible But we don't need the evolutionary explanation We can just point out that these negativity biases are very well confirmed in psychology that'll do for present purposes One other thing that I'll mention really quick because it's important It's distinct but it does have an effect on happiness is confirmation bias Which probably a lot of people are familiar who's familiar with with you've heard this term before I assume a lot of people have So the idea is that we're more likely to seek and To to pay attention to to give credence for things that support our belief system rather than things to oppose it So here's my example of this you can try to convince chef Boyardee to go paleo, but it's going to be an uphill battle So it's hard for people to accept data that right discords with their worldview Okay, so one of the reasons this is bad is I mean if you've ever known someone who has some habit That's clearly harmful to their health harmful to their happiness. It's like obvious to you It's obvious to people around them yet. They persist in that confirmation bias is partly to think Okay, so now I want to talk about negativity bias in action and interesting an interesting case that I think helps illustrate it So to me one of the very interesting examples of this is the mainstream news Aka what grown rational adults believe is happening out there in the world? Lots of italics and exclamation points So I did this completely unbiased not at all cherry-pick just grab the CNN headlines one day Put them up and here are some of my favorite. This is from some day in July So we've got such great headlines as SWAT team storms jet grabs passenger Patient doctor cut off my manhood Intruder, I'm pregnant man. I shot her 551 pound convict and house arrest and probably my favorite one is volleyball player too attractive So out of these 19 headlines 14 are definitely negative only one is positive Does anyone really think that this paints an accurate picture of what's going on in the world out there? So if you pay attention to the news you might think the world is full of war Right, it's full of disaster. It's full of death and destruction on a mass scale But of course in reality the world is also full of growing businesses and thriving partnerships It's home depot and Samsung hooking hooking up a nice partnership there Performances that enchant the senses that's Yanni. I recommend him and Meals that delight our palates look at how happy they are Right so the point isn't a harp on the news media the point is that I see this as a kind of dark microcosm of our cognitive and attentional Biases it offers a glimpse into how we fixate on the negative. We obsess about it We are brains kind of irrationally view it as more important as more significant and it gives us this message Oh bad thing bad thing bad thing. I can't control it. There's nothing I can do. Everyone is going to die How to deal with bias well awareness is the first step, but it's not enough research has shown that you can be aware of your Own biases and still be biased But it is the first step The second step I would say is developmental techniques to deal with bias mindfulness and meditation are Bear have been shown to be very effective at allowing us to direct our attention and give us an awareness of where our mind is at and then third I just be aware being aware of the triggers in our life so being aware of the objects the Circumstances and the people that trigger certain things in our mind and structuring our lives accordingly is the point that we Should have no negative emotions No, of course not that would be impossible and extremely foolish in various ways The point is to be aware of our own minds and to be aware of what's triggering these things okay, so Positive psychology and ancestral health. How can they give us a glimpse into a happier life? So we can start by saying what are the characteristics of a happy human being besides good health which we already know There's been a ton of work done on this and there's too much stuff to get into but here are two really interesting ones So psychologists have studied this extensively They found a couple of major themes actually they found a lot of major themes, but here are two of my favorites So one is that happy people utilize their individual character strengths to foster their work their hobbies and their social relationships So utilize your character strengths to foster your work your hobbies and your social relationships and Another theme is that happy people become Absorbed in the present moments of their work their hobbies and their lives so that they experience a state of flow a State of flow being a state where you are Absorbed in the present moment. You're absorbed into here and now of your experience You're not thinking of other places or other people. You're absorbed in it. You're just sort of flowing Okay, so combine this with ancestral health. I think there's an interesting analogy here right conventional medicine and psychology are negatively oriented They're concerned with treating disease and disorder. So the ethos is something like this wait until you break It will happen and we'll fix you with pills with surgeries with treatments But positive psychology and ancestral health on the other hand have this sort of positively oriented ethos right positive psychology says There's more to mental health than the absence of mental illness and ancestral health says there's more to physical health than the absence of disease So on the one hand we say embrace the things that make you positively Flourish and that make you happy and on the other hand we say embrace the things that nourish you and give you vitality So nourishment to the ancestral approach is to give ourselves the right nutrients, right? And so we can list all these examples of micronutrients from colorful plants essential fats and proteins Good bacteria, etc. Etc. And The psychologist who studies happiness wants to wants to say nourish ourselves with the right lifestyle nutrients, right? So work and hobbies and relationships that leverage our character strengths Activities that promote flow deep friendships and some other things that I don't have time to talk about I Think one very example very good example of the way these things come together is in play So in play it's a very pure expression of our creativity And our autonomy and our sense of flow When we are in the right state when we're playing we Harness our physical and mental strengths and we get into a state of flow So for example This guy is definitely harnessing his strengths his vitality his persistence his physical strength Do you think he cares about other stuff that's happening in the world or like, you know negative things like oh god There are wars going on No, he's just happy. He's flowing right? So there are a lot of good ways to play playing with movement is fantastic one of my favorites is playing with theatrical improvisation You can play with whatever this is So there are a lot of ways to play you can play with writing you can play with music art sports games socializing Find find the way that you want to play or the ways So I think we all have this inner drive to create things to be playful to be in a state of flow I think it's absolutely a mistake I think it's a completely dangerous and insidious mistake to say that play is only for kids or only people who are artsy or Creative it leads to this kind of situation from one of my favorite comics I'll just let you look at that for five seconds And I think anyone who looks at that they go. Oh, yeah, I get it. Okay, so I'm gonna close by saying Telling someone to pursue happiness. That's pretty mysterious If I just tell you to pursue happiness It'll actually probably make you sadder because you'll go I don't know how to do that or you might try and you'll and you'll just you'll be like well What should I do so what I would say is that the better thing is to is to actually be more specific and to say understand your own mind understand your own biases Nourish yourself nourish your body use your character strengths To create things do what puts you into a state of flow those are just some suggestions that are very well proven and when we fuse ancestral health and Empirical psychology about happiness we get this really nice framework of understanding our own mind Nourishing ourselves and playing that's a nice start again. It's not everything, but it's a nice start And so I hope I've convinced you that that offers a promising framework So go take away one thing from this maybe maybe play more maybe understand your own biases and Go do something awesome. That's it. We so we're out of time here Are we taking a minute for questions or a? A couple of minutes for questions. Yeah in the back Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a great question. I certainly don't want to advocate like living in a oh Yeah, she was asking well if you if news media is so negative What if you want to affect social change you have a job involving that maybe you want to promote good in the world and not Just within your own circle What do what do you do? How do you reconcile those two things? So I think it's a fantastic question. I'm not advocating that everyone live in a sort of like happy parochial bubble You know I myself try to just not look at the news at all because I just don't need to and it doesn't help me So I just don't do it. I'm still here But I recognize that some people need to and so I would say that's fine Yeah, I mean if it's for your job or you need to the only thing I would really say is Recognize what parts of it you need and what parts of it you don't I don't really have anything more to say Than that other than yep, that's a completely that's you know a completely fine point in that some people will have it for their jobs And if you do just recognize it for what it is Yeah, right there Definitely definitely I think do we have time for one more we are out of time