More happiness, less stumbling

When I read that a popular science book on happiness, 'Stumbling on Happiness' by Daniel Gilbert, had won The Royal Society science book prize, I couldn't buy it quickly enough. Thanks to modern technology and my preference for ebooks, it didn't take long. From first reading the news story to having a copy on my phone took about 2 minutes in all thanks to my favorite ebook site Mobipocket.

Happiness and the pursuit thereof, especially from a scientific perspective, has been a subject of interest to me for as long as I can remember. I read any news story or watch any television program about it. So the gist of what the book said was something that I was already aware of and has influenced much of the way I lead my life.

The book was about why we very often take actions that we believe will make us happy but in fact don't. This is a widespread problem to the extent that many, if not most, people devote their entire lives to courses of action that they believe will make them happy but do not. It goes to the heart of my views on materialism, status, workaholism, marriage and children.

My own view is somewhat more centrally focused around evolutionary psychology than the author's, but he did nevertheless cover this aspect well and my own view has been expanded from the information in the book. Here is my view.
1. We have evolved to act in ways that will tend to replicate our genes, because genes that give us these tendencies will survive in place of those that do not. If you are in any doubt of this then you did not pay attention in biology or you are a creationist.
2. Our tendency to predict what will make us happy in future and act on this prediction, is an evolved tendency to coax us into acting in a way that will tend to replicate our genes. If you are in doubt of this, and I know that many people are because people with a non-scientific background are often blank slaters, then I suggest you read the book The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker which debunks this approach.

What we believe will make us happy and what will actually make us happy can easily be two different things and much care, with the help of scientific facts, is needed to distinguish between the two.

Most of the book is devoted to explaining how inaccurate and deceptive is our ability to predict the future, especially our future happiness. It covers all the tricks and failings of the brain that lead to this and is fascinating whether you accept the basic view above or not. It draws on a huge volume of scientific data which the author makes accessible to non-scientists. It is also very entertainingly written. Unlike many popular science books, it is full of humour, from irreverent to witty. Here is an example of the irreverent:

"Phineas Gage was a foreman for the Rutland Railroad who, on a lovely autumn day in 1848, ignited a small explosion in the vicinity of his feet, launching a three-and-a-half-foot-long iron rod into the air, which Phineas cleverly caught with his face."

Here is an example of the witty:

"My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it."

Despite the above, at the start of the book he promises to offer a solution of how to correctly predict what will make you happy in the future, but he warns that the reader will almost certainly not take the advice. I made a guess as to what the advice would be based on what my answer is, but his was completely different. His was a good answer though. He said, based on scientific studies, that the best way to predict how you will feel in the future if you take a particular course of action is to ask someone who is currently in that situation and has taken the course of action you are considering. People misremember the past and mis-predict the future, but are generally reliable when talking about how they feel in the present. I agree with this but my own answer, which I think is compatible with his, is that you should take account of the gene-replication tricks played on you by your subconscious to help separate the real from the delusion. The two strategies can work together.

For example, the desire to have children is very clearly likely to lead to a replication of your genes and so is a prime candidate for the delusion category. Ask people who are actually in the process of bringing up children and they will tell you that it ruins their life and is a nightmare. Scientific studies have also found that people are less happy when bringing up children than when not. Interestingly, the studies not only find that people who plan to have children imagine that it will be a very happy experience, but people who have had children misremember it as having been a very happy experience. The only truth is from those actually in the process of doing it.

The same is true, I think, for various other things that people devote their lives to. The pursuit of status symbols is one. Boosted by advertising, people believe that if only they could have that prestigious car/house/furniture etc etc then they would be tremendously happy. Status symbols, sadly, tend to make one more attractive to the opposite sex and so help them to increase their gene replication. But they do not make people happy, at least not me. On the contrary, people sacrifice much to afford them.

Work is another example, mentioned at length in the book. People may dream about retirement but in practice cannot stop working. Most people work hard all their lives and then drop dead relatively soon after retiring. The evolutionary explanation for this given in the book is that as an economic society, our ability to expand and support more children relies on everyone working as much as possible, so we have evolved to do so (via the false belief that it will make us happier). He may be right, but I think my own explanation does not need to invoke group-based evolutionary benefits. I think that any one individual has a better chance of replicating his/her genes the more he/she works. Also, once you get caught up in materialism and the pursuit of status symbols then you have to work all your life to sustain them.

So what does this philosophy mean for me personally, I hear you ask. Ok, you are probably not asking this at all. You are probably wondering what the theory means for yourself rather than me, which is fair enough. If you come to a conclusion about you own life, please let me know via the comments or email; I'd be very interested to hear. I can only tell you about myself. I think that I have implemented this philosophy more than anyone I know. I have consciously avoided things that the evidence suggests will not make me happy. I have avoided marriage, children, status symbols and have lived frugally so as to allow me to stop working. A lot of it may be things I would have done anyway because of my nature. It's hard to tell, but I think the awareness of the illusions of desire has featured in my decision making.

But the book highlighted aspects that I should be concerned about. One was that one of the reasons we mis-predict the future is that we base it too much on how we feel in the present and not on how we would feel in the future. Much of my dreaming about giving up work and living somewhere quiet and stress-free was done following very stressful periods at work. But it is possible that if I did actually go somewhere really quiet to live I might get bored and miss city life. Time will tell and I could always move. I'll try to keep my options open.