October 26, 2021

Happiness, Suffering, and The Sweet Spot | Paul Bloom on EconTalk with Russ Roberts

Check out the EconTalk episode page

We have very paradoxical pleasures – eating spicy food, long runs, crossword puzzles, watching scary movies
- Pleasure is often realized and maximized as a result of suffering
- Having children is the ultimate paradoxical pleasure:
  - “If you do [parenting] right, [your children] will eventually leave you. Actually, if you do it right, they will eventually think a lot less of you than you think of them. It’s such a perverse project, a very human one.” – Paul Bloom
We are temporal creatures, we thrive in a bad-to-good time arc
- The Sweet Spot – embracing the cyclical nature of joy and suffering helps use worry and anxiety for positive reinforcement
- “It hurts as much as it’s worth” – Paul Bloom
We are motivational pluralists, we don’t just want one thing – happiness is made up of reward, struggle, self-fulfillment, well-being (etc.), and not just pleasure
Happiness and meaning are often difficult to maintain simultaneously, anxiety is the variable function in the equation
- Happiness occurs when you try to limit your anxiety
- Meaning often comes in high instances of anxiety considering external pressures
When it comes to Walter White or Tony Soprano, people get skewed moral visions. We end up rooting for values that we don’t even hold.
- If you become the people you hang out with, are you hanging out with the characters in your favorite TV show?

Paul Bloom (@paulbloomatyale) is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and formerly at Yale. Russ and Paul discuss the positive and dependent relationship between suffering and pleasure as it relates to well-being.
The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning by Paul Bloom
Host: Russ Roberts (@EconTalker)

We have very paradoxical pleasures – eating spicy food, long runs, crossword puzzles, watching scary movies
- All require effort and a little bit of pain, but they have satisfying trade-offs
- Suffering makes the pay-off more valuable
- Having children is the ultimate paradoxical pleasure
  - Negatives: You lose sleep, increase marital stress, sacrifice time/money
  - Positives: Gives your life meaning, purpose, value, and identity (Paul says the first thing he introduces himself as is a father, not a professor)
    - “If you do [parenting] right, [your children] will eventually leave you. Actually, if you do it right, they will eventually think a lot less of you than you think of them. It’s such a perverse project, a very human one.” – Paul Bloom
There’s importance in ‘chosen suffering’ – life is boring if you don’t apply hardness to your activities, even the simplest of tasks

Experience Machine – Putting your life in a simulated reality, pretending to achieve continuous pleasure for the sake of pleasure, not for the sake of experience. Pleasure is no longer dependent on suffering.
- Robert Nozick refutes the hedonist principles in Experience Machine – you don’t want to think you climbed Mt. Everest, you want to actually climb Mt. Everest
- Experiences only get value because they reflect realities
- Drugs can be a form of the experience machine
There is room for moral pluralism – a moral agreement with yourself that you see value in both pleasure and suffering but there are instances where one presents more value
- We are not always ‘utility maximizers’ – there’s a ton of nuance that goes into these decisions over how to regulate our experience (simulated and real)

Many happiness strategies are not grounded in science but rather in becoming an NYT bestseller or getting a Ted Talk
- Most of them are in a narrow-minded hedonist approaches
- We are motivational pluralists, we don’t just want one thing – happiness is made up of reward, struggle, self-fulfillment, well-being (etc.), and not just pleasure
Happiness and meaning are almost impossible to maintain at 100% simultaneously
- Happiness is most often found in people who focus on themselves
  - These people focus on removing as much anxiety from their lives as possible
- Meaning is usually externally focused
  - People with meaningful lives have a lot of anxiety because people rely on their efforts, reducing their capacity for happiness
- ‘Fun’ can exist in both places but is ironically found more often in difficult activities than on vacation

TV programs certainly shape our moral compass, good and bad
- Paul cites an example where as a kid he was watching a sitcom where a child talked back to his parents and the laugh-track played accordingly. This associates the illusion of talking back to your parents as a positive moral trait.
Anti-Heroes have become a cultural norm
- We recognize that people can be “roughly good” but also have bad parts in them
- When it comes to Walter White or Tony Soprano, people get a skewed moral vision. We end up rooting for values that we don’t even hold. Whether that expands past the screen, we can only hypothesize.
  - You become the people you hang out with, are you hanging out with the characters in your favorite TV show?