Modern WisdomWhy Pain & Suffering Are Necessary For A Good Life - Paul Bloom
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 29,945 words- 0:00 – 3:51
Intro
- PBPaul Bloom
... I wanna run a marathon, and I'm really hoping to get blisters and to get ill and to, to fail or whatever. It's not like that at all. I don't think people court suffering in that sort of way. But at the same time, people know that if it didn't have the possibility of failure and difficulty and struggle, it wouldn't be seen as meaningful. You don't want to fail. But on the other hand, the chance of failure has to be part and parcel of the thing. (air whooshing)
- CWChris Williamson
Paul Bloom, welcome to the show.
- PBPaul Bloom
Thanks for having me back.
- CWChris Williamson
My pleasure, man. Why are we talking about suffering today?
- PBPaul Bloom
I have come out with a new book, uh, called, uh, The Sweet Spot: Uh, The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. And it is a topic which I have been occupied by for many years, and I think it's absolutely fascinating. I think suffering connects to all sorts of ... provides some nice explanations for some very odd and puzzling behavior, connects to movies, connects to sex, connects to purpose and life. And, um, and it just ... And I think it also just tells us some interesting things about human nature.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the c-
- PBPaul Bloom
So, you're on, you're on a man, you're on a man to talk to about this.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, true. What's the, uh, core message of the book?
- PBPaul Bloom
Um, well, when I started the book, I, I was interested in puzzles about, um, what, what psychologists call benign masochism. So why do people like spicy foods or hot baths or, um, scary movies or sad movies and all of that? And I was just focusing on a role of, of, um, explaining the message was gonna be here's why we use pain and suffering to, to increase some kind of pleasure in our lives. But as I began to do this more and more and look at this and read philosophers, read psychologists, I began to realize a lot of the suffering we choose isn't in the service of pleasure, but in the service of other goals, like meaning and morality. So in, in pretty late into working on the book, I think the message is, um, what you could call motivational pluralism, which is people want more than one thing. We want pleasure, but we also want morality. We want meaning. And that's one bit of the message. The rest of the message is that sometimes chosen suffering of the right sort is just what we need to get us there.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you define pleasure, meaning, and morality?
- PBPaul Bloom
It's a good question. Um ... You could corne- you could start off by defining it in kind of a rough and intuitive way. So roughly, pleasure is things we seek out and we go, make us smile, make us happy, give us a glow. You know, so if, if you're hungry, a hot food Sunday is pleasure for most of us. Uh, you know, sex, being loved, nice artwork, a beautiful walk on a beautiful day. That's pleasure. Um, morality is doing the right thing. And, you know, doing the right thing, which could mean, involve fairness and justice. It could mean helping somebody. It could mean harming somebody. Uh, applying some sort of moral r- moral rule or principle. And meaning is a different animal all together, connected to the other two, but, but meaning is, um, a pursuit connected to ... that has significance, that, uh, takes a while, that influences other people, that involves goals and sub-goals, and most of all requires, um, some degree of difficulty, sometimes physical pain, sometimes anxiety, sometimes suffering. If you have a pursuit and you find it easy and natural and fun, it probably isn't a meaningful one. It could be a fun one. So, you know, a fun pursuit is eating some M&Ms, going for a nice walk. A meaningful pursuit could be raising children, starting a business, uh, going to war. A moral pursuit could be helping a friend in trouble, you know, trying to punish somebody who did something wrong, trying to, to fight for justice. And they're all related, but they take you in different directions.
- 3:51 – 13:14
How People Use Suffering to get Pleasure
- PBPaul Bloom
- CWChris Williamson
What are some of the ways that people use suffering to get pleasure, then?
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah, there's a lot of ways. Um, w- the simplest answer is probably simply contrast. So, um, one of the tricks we can do is we can experience a bit of chosen pain and, so as to make the subsequent experience more pleasurable. You know, you eat really spicy food that burns your mouth, and you take a swig of beer, and that feels magnificent. Um, you, you, um, you go into a really hot sauna or a hot, be- a hot, say, a hot Finnish sauna. You dive into a cool lake, and then you are in bliss. Uh, or, or take a broader time scale. You see, um, you must have seen John Wick.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. See John Wick. So the beginning of the movie is they kill his dog. No, it's in the trailer. Not, not a spoiler. They, they kill his dog, and it's actually very sad. He loved that dog. He's a retired assassin, and he has a dog. His dead wife gives him a dog, loves his dog. They kill the dog, some B- Russian mobsters, this bad thing happens. But then, he goes and takes his revenge and kills everybody in a, in a comic explosion of homicide. Um, and there's ... The second two-thirds of the movie is enjoyable because the first third sets u- sets up the contrast. And it would be a mistake for you to say, "Oh, John Wick, great movie." You know what would have made it better? If they took away the dog part, which was really a bummer, because it got to be so much fun because you had the contrast in the beginning. And there are people who do these, these, um, big data analyses of movies and stories and, and, and novels and plays, and a very typical pattern is things get bad, bad, bad, and then they get better. And there's a pleasure to that.
- CWChris Williamson
Inherent in that, you talk about the importance of the ordering or the sequence of-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... suffering and pleasure. Can you dig into that?
- PBPaul Bloom
Um, there's all these interesting facts about ordering in time that I think we know in our gut intuitively. We often play with it. But here's the simplest. You have bad stuff. You have good stuff. That's the order you want it in. So, uh, I'm doing movies today, so you know, Shawshank Redemption. This guy spends 20 years in prison for a crime ...... presumably didn't commit, although there's, there's weird interpretations of the movie where, which is unclear. But, um, and then ... And, and this is spoiler day, but, um, but he escapes and spends the rest of his wonderful life in a, in a Mexican beach. And that's a ... And you feel wonderful at the film. Imagine it were reversed. You know, he's living on this Mexican beach, having a wonderful time with his, with his friend, uh, and everything, and then he ends up in prison for the rest of his life. The same amount of time. That'd suck. And in general, there's sort of a balance. We want things to get better. There's these studies which, um, ask people about the kind of jobs they want. So do you want a job that starts off low-paying and gets higher paying, higher paying, higher paying, or the reverse? And imagine it so happened that this is calibrated so that maybe the one that went down gives you more money in total. Still, who wants that? You want things to get better. And so just sort of the dance of time. And sometimes we, sometimes we do the dance of time to give ourselves pleasure in kind of clever ways. So one of my favorite studies is by George Loewenstein. He asked people this great question. He says, "Imagine you could kiss your favorite movie star on the lips, fully consensually and pleasurably." And then he says, "When do you want to do it?" Now, Psychology 101 says right now. Self-control is hard. We're greedy for time. Economics 101 says right now, because you, you know, you, you, you ... The, the same sort of temporal discounting, better to get $10 today than $10 tomorrow. That's why we have interest, and so on. People say two days. Y- w- ... Two days? (laughs) And it turns out that what people want to do is they want to savor the idea. They want to s- they want to take some time to savor in anticipation, uh, of, of, of the pleasure they're gonna get. Similarly for bad things, even though economics and psychology says put them off as long as you can, and sometimes we do that, sometimes we try to get it over with because we're worried about the experience of dread.
- CWChris Williamson
What like?
- PBPaul Bloom
Pardon me?
- CWChris Williamson
What like? In what ways would we do it over with?
- PBPaul Bloom
Oh, uh, uh, take a, a dentist appointment. So under some circumstances you just put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off forever. But sometimes things weigh on you, and if you ask people, "Do you want to do it now or you want to do it tomorrow?" They'll say, "Now. Hit me with it now. Let's get it over with." And it's true there's a ... There'd be a rationality to doing it tomorrow, because, you know, maybe you'll die or something, and then you're lucky and you don't have to get the appointment. But, um, but if you, if you do it, uh, now, at least you don't have to live through the, the dread.
- CWChris Williamson
I wrote a newsletter about this a little while ago and termed it-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... anxiety cost. So in the same ways you have-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... opportunity cost, the anxiety cost of ... I- it was a justification for me, if someone has a daily habit that they want to do, let's say it's meditation or it's some stretching or it's walk the dog or d- whatever it is, I argued that because your, uh, daily requirement resets essentially every morning as soon as you wake up, that's the beginning of your day to complete this. If you spend most of the day reminding yourself that you still need to do that thing later on in the day, you have spent that day suffering this anxiety cost. Whereas if-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you get your morning routine locked in and you meditate first thing, you just get to bathe in the fact that this-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... self-righteousness up on your high horse for the rest of the day being so congratulatory about the fact that you meditated and did your stretching first thing.
- PBPaul Bloom
I love giving advice, and it's the primary bit of advice, which is do your most important thing right away in the morning. And f- and, uh, most important, but it's also the hardest, you know. If it's easy and fun, you could, you could, you could wait a bit, but ... And for me, it's writing, which is, you know, I'll, I'll, I want to write an hour each day, and if I don't do it in the morning, I could put it off and I feel bad and so on. But you just, you just want to get it done right away. And, you know, there's a satisfaction in it. It's a, it's an example of something. There's all sorts of activities, um, working out and writing are two real go-to examples, that aren't that much fun when you, when you do them. You know, I don't know, maybe your mileage may vary. But, you know, you ... There's always, you know, there's always email or Twitter or hanging out with friends and so on. But having done them gives you a certain satisfaction.
- CWChris Williamson
You talk about-
- PBPaul Bloom
And that's another reason for the, for the contour that, you know, we want.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, so that's contrast, but you also talk about signaling and mastery as well.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes. There's, um, there's all sorts of things. So one of the ... One, one reason, and then there's one other which we'll mention, but one way you get, uh, pleasure from suffering is the pleasure of a good name, uh, Jeremy Bentham's term of good reputation. So sometimes we, we choose to suffer to impress others with how tough we are, you know. Um, you know, I, I ... I was once out, my son and some of his friends, and they started having a wasabi eating contest, and you know, they wouldn't have done it by themselves, but all the guys are there, and they wanted to show how tough they are. In a religious context, you may want to show how pious you are. And, uh, there's all sorts of religious rituals involving a lot of suffering and pain and deprivation, but you do them to show, you know, "Look, look, look, look what a believer I am. Look how, how faithful I am to God." Um, sometimes a very different thing is when people will cut themselves or harm themselves as a cry for help, and there you're not signaling strength, you're signaling, uh, need. So you have, you have a, a, um, signaling as one thing. You have the joy of mastery. It feels good to be, um, to be in control of something, to be able to sort of exert your will over your body. And this is one important contrast I make in the book which is absolutely critical, is I'm talking about chosen suffering. Unchosen suffering, bad stuff that happens to you, is a very different thing. So C.S. Lewis gives a great example of, uh, fasting, where he says, you know, um, if you're not eating because you have no f- you can't afford any food or someone's locked you in a room with no food, that just sucks. That's just ... You're just suffering. Try to make the most of it, but that's awful. But if you're not eating 'cause you're fasting-... then you could feel proud. In fact, CS Lewis being CS Lewis disapproves and says, you know, "You shouldn't be so proud of yourself. Just, just, you know, worship God and get over yourself." But, but still, there's a sense of pride. And, and one other thing, since we're going through the list that pain can do, is it can be an escape from, from yourself. It can, it can be an escape from consciousness. Um, you know, I described in my book the first time I, I ever sparred in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and rolled with somebody who, you know, was like everybody else in the gym, younger and stronger than me. And so it's like two minutes, three minutes, and I realized afterwards that during that period, I thought of nothing else. I didn't worry about my, my... the class I had to teach, or an embarrassing thing I said to my partner, or money problems, whatever. I didn't think, "I wonder how I'm looking," and everything like that. I was totally immersed in this. And difficulty does that for you. You know, pain does that for you. Of all the bad things to be said about pain, one good thing is it certainly focuses the attention.
- 13:14 – 25:04
Why We Love Scary Movies
- PBPaul Bloom
- CWChris Williamson
You told me a story the last time that we spoke about a, a dominatrix who said-
- PBPaul Bloom
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... was the quote, "Nothing captures attention like a whip."
- PBPaul Bloom
You have a good memory. Yes. Yes. I don't know why we're talking about sa- ... I wasn't even studying sadomasochism then, but it's such a good quote. Um, yes. Um, yes. You know, she says something like, you hold it up and people's eyes cannot, cannot move away from it. And this is, you know, there's, I think, a deep insight here. There, there's, uh, a wonderful theoretical paper, uh, on art asking the question, why is so much art through history grotesque and unpleasant? And the answer is because art is in a constant battle for eyeballs. You know, yeah, we want people to notice your artwork. And, um, and something that's grotesque or unpleasant captures, captures it. You know, you, you look at something like, I, I don't know, um, uh, something, a grotesque scene of, of cannibalism or, or, or torture, and it just captures you. And of course, movies work in the same principle.
- CWChris Williamson
Why do we like scary movies?
- PBPaul Bloom
I think there's different reasons, but I think that there's one general answer to that which extends to why we like scary things in general, which is our mind is naturally drawn to worst-case scenarios. And some may be a lot of fun. You, you know, you're free, you have nothing to do, you just, you... to think about good stuff, to imagine yourself winning a prize or somebody falls in love with you and everything. But those don't pose any puzzles. If I win a great prize, I'll say thank you and accept it, and that's great. But what's useful... And I think this is one part of my book where I do get sort of adaptationist. I think where, where there's a Darwinian advantage to thinking about the bad stuff, to thinking about what happens when the world goes to hell, to thinking about what happens when, when, when your life gets messed up in some way. An advantage to thinking about these things is that it, um, that it basically gets you to prepare and ruminate and deliberate. And there's some evidence that people who have positive fantasies actually make out less well in the world than people who have negative fantasies.
- CWChris Williamson
How'd you meet?
- PBPaul Bloom
Thinking about bad stuff... Well, this is some stuff by a, by a psychologist, um, blank on her name at, at NYU. So she tests these people who are looking for romantic relationships. They're, they're, you know, they're single, they'd like to find a partner. And she asked them, "How often do you fantasize about being in love? How often do you fantasize about being with the, the man or woman of your dreams?" And the people who say, "A lot," tend to be the same people that six months later don't have a partner. The people who are... In another study, she asked people if they wanted to lose weight. And said, "Do you ever think of yourself being fit and strong and everything?" "Yeah, a lot of the time." And the people, again, the people who think about that a lot tend to be the people who don't lose as much weight. And her theory of it is that for these positive fantasies, what you do is you sort of, you, you kind of consume the pleasure in your imagination, and you're less motivated to do it in real life. If I really fantasize a lot about having a girlfriend, then maybe I try less hard to have a girlfriend. I got my fantasies after all. Now, negative ruminations don't have that problem. They are, they are always focused on the worst case. And I think, to go back to your question, one reason why we like scary movies is that, um, they are imaginary and imaginative depictions of worst-case scenarios. So take, you know, take zombie films, zombie TV shows. You know, you could make fun of the idea and say, "Do you really need to prepare for a zombie apocalypse?" But these movies and TV shows are never about zombies actually. What they are is about what happens when the world goes to hell, and there's no government, there's no police. The dangers in zombie movies are almost always people, not zombies. And so we're drawn to this. And then there's other ingredients. So, so you might think fear is negative, but if... And, and in fact, there were some early theories that said that the people who like horror movies aren't as afraid as people, as the people who hate them. And it turned out to be total nonsense. People who like horror movies are just as afraid as people who don't like them, but they enjoy being afraid. And for any negative emotion, in the right context, particularly a context where it's imaginary, so you know there's no real danger, it can be a source of pleasure. You can enjoy being afraid, you can enjoy being angry. You can even enjoy being sad. You can even enjoy physical pain under the right circumstances.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, there's people who go out of their way to watch sad movies, the ones that-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... make them cry and make them bawl their eyes out at the end.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
It is interesting to think about the fact that there's this... it's almost like a sandbox, a, a, a safe playpen in which we can indulge ourselves in some of the emotions that are at the extreme areas of life. You know, I would wager that there'll be some people that'll go through life, and some of the most extreme emotions perhaps that they feel in their entire lives will be during-... watching movies.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes. Yes. Or ... That's right. Um, or related to this, will involve events that are so far away from them to, um, to be effectively fictional. When Princess Diana was killed, uh, d- died in this car crash, people mourned to an extraordinary degree. And there were people who went on TV and said, uh, you know, "This was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. When my mom died, that was sad, but, oh, when Princess Diana died, that was, that was really sad." We, we consume these emotions, and I think it, it... there's a safety to it, you know. The death of my child would be ... would, would, would destroy me. But the death of a, of a child in a, in a movie, I could vicariously feel the sadness. But at the same time, I know nothing bad has really happened. I could feel afraid, but I know nothing scary, nothing dangerous is really about, about to, to, to, to happen. So you're safe. In some way, people have described the pleasures of imagination as a form of safe play.
- CWChris Williamson
I suppose that-
- PBPaul Bloom
Now ... Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I suppose that BDSM's kind of similar to this, but it's got ... it's acting on a number of the different pathways. So you have the contrast effect, that you have something that is-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... painful and it continues and it continues. And then the relief is the moment at which the pain no longer is pain, and therefore that's pleasure. But you also have this presence, this escape from self.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Perhaps you have a signaling aspect to whoever it is that you're with. "Look at how perhaps strong or resilient I am."
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"You can't hurt me." And then maybe there's even a, a, a, a essence of mastery in that you are put into a situation that you know your physiology should be responding to with panic. Um, let's say it's, uh, asphyxiation or let's say that it's being hit. The usual response should be something other than the one that you are giving, which is arousal.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes. In some way, BDSM is a perfect storm, where, where all of the different theories of, of the pleasures of pain kind of come in and click. And, and that raises the question that I do not have an answer to, which is, why do some people like it and some people don't? Um, and same with some people I know like to cry at movies. Some people, not, not, not even close. Some people like spicy foods, others don't. And I'll be, I'll be totally honest, 'cause I, I often think about this. Um, we have no theory as to why some people are this and some people are that. You know, it used to be thought that BDSM is kind of pathological, and you kind of look for people with other disorders. It turns out not to be true. You know, people who engage in it are no more likely to suffer psychological problems or have, in some way, bad personalities than people who, who don't. And at some level, the appetite for it is very popular. More often in imagination than, than they're doing. So, you know, as I was doing research for the book, I was looking up, uh, Fifty Shades of Grey, which is a BDSM story, and it was the most popular book of the last decade. Like, this ... From 2010 to 2020, that was the most popular book. The second most popular book was the sequel. The third most popular book was the end of the trilogy. So, there's definitely an audience for this sort of stuff, though I, I imagine that the vast majority of these people w- wouldn't engage in anything serious.
- CWChris Williamson
You looked at the sexual fantasies and how they differ between men and women. I think that was Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's work.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
And he's a, a past guest on the show. That guy is an animal of a data scientist. What did you ... What did you find out from his work?
- PBPaul Bloom
Huh. Weird stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- 25:04 – 32:14
What is the Ethics Paradox?
- PBPaul Bloom
- CWChris Williamson
What is the effort paradox?
- PBPaul Bloom
Ah. The effort paradox is actually, um, developed by... Uh, the, the term came from a friend of mine, uh, Mickey Inslet, who's at University of Toronto, not, not far from me. And the paradox goes like this. Typically, creatures obey the law of least effort. And this is, um... This shows up... This was in the animal psychology world for a long time. So, you know, if there's food in front of a dog, and the dog is hungry, it will go to the food. It won't walk around in circles around the food. And again, it makes sense. If you're thirsty, you reach for a glass of water. You won't, like, move, move your hand and do figure eights around the room. You take the, the least effort, you know. You go the most direct path. And we... And animals and humans avoid effort. Um, so, you know, if there's... If, if you're... If a dog is hungry and there's two bones, and it wants the bones equally, and one's close to it and one's far away from it, it'll go to the one close to it. Common sense. The paradox is sometimes it's not true. So sometimes we seek out effort, um, and everyday life is full of it. I mean, here's a, an entirely unsexy example. I do crossword puzzles. I sit, I sit around on my iPad and I do crossword puzzles, and I try to spend some time trying to figure it out. I do not do it... Uh, I'm not gonna attract any mates with my crossword puzzle skills 'cause A, it's not really a mate-attracting kind of thing (laughs) , and B, I'm not even that good at it. And, but I enjoy it. It's kind of fun. And then, you know, and then... And that's such a paradox. Why would I, why would I exert effort and, and, you know, deal with the opportunity costs of all the other things I should be doing just, just to do a crossword puzzle? And, you know, put aside people who train for marathons or triathlons. You know, uh, it makes s-... If you're doing it because you, you know, you, you have a chance to become the world champion, well, there's, like, a logic to that. But the vast majority don't do... just do it in order to, to, to do it. And so the effort paradox is, um, why sometimes is effort attractive as opposed to, to something which one avoids? And there's different answers. Um, one answer is what you were talking about before involving the feeling of mastery and accomplishment. Um, another answer connects to, um, the feeling of flow. When this is, um... This is the work of, uh, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who sadly passed away a couple weeks ago. And he points out that there's a sort of special positive feeling, not exactly pleasure, but a feeling of satisfaction to be engaged in an activity at a level that you're not bored, but also you're not freaking out, you're not too anxious. There's right in between. Um, the best definition of flow I've heard is you're in a state of flow if, um, if you just forget... y- you lose track of time. You forget to eat, you forget to pick up your kids at school. You're in a state of flow. And there's something to flow states which are immensely attractive to people, though they're very hard to get. So he does these interviews, and, uh, some people say they never have in their whole life because it requires effort and work to get to a flow state. And it's very easy to sit on, sit on the sofa and watch Netflix and eat corn chips, you know. Getting some rock climbing in, or sustained musical practice, or writing poetry, or even a deep discussion with a friend, that could be tough. But that's, that's what we find worthwhile.
- CWChris Williamson
Are you familiar with Steven Kotler's work?
- PBPaul Bloom
No, I'm not.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So he is a researcher in the area of flow, but he comes at it from a much more biological perspective.
- PBPaul Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So what he's doing is he's trying to find the biological prerequisites that cause us to fall into flow. And he's got a book out that came out earlier this year called The Art of the Impossible, and it's a-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a primer, a peak-performance primer for how to get into flow. It's interesting that you said that you like to write early in the morning, because they've done studies and they've identified the particular type of brain wave patterns that you have when you're in flow. And his argument is that it is significantly easier to get yourself into flow if you are doing the thing that you're required to, to be in flow for as short after waking as possible, because you're nearly there. I'm sure that you have heard-
- PBPaul Bloom
I see. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... some of the stories. I think it was... Was it Newton that used to go to sleep with ball bearings in his hand on a chair? And then as he finally dropped off, the ball bearings would fall out of his hand and fall on the floor, and that would be his little way to kick-start himself into a flow state because it got him into those brain waves, switched off the default mode network, allowed him to see different connections that he wouldn't have done usually. But The Art of the Impossible by Steven Kotler is a really good primer, um, for understanding flow states from a much more biological perspective. Really good.
- PBPaul Bloom
Huh. I'll check that out. I mean, I, I read Flow when I was young. And, man, my feeling reading the book, uh, reading his, his first popular book (inaudible) was envy. You know, he describes these, these rock climbers who spend hours and hours just lost in an activity, or these expert musicians, or these dancers. And it's just... And, you know, I would love to aspire to even close to the life of flow he describes. And the insight about morning seems right. My, my own sense is the first thing I do when I wake up is I make myself coffee, or else I'll just fall back asleep or have a headache. But before the coffee kicks in, there's this dr-... somewhat drowsy state.... where you could just get lost in something. It's like, you know, m- meditation for people who are crap at meditation, and where you just find yourself just flowing into it and then, um... And so, yeah, that sounds great.
- CWChris Williamson
You know what else I've f-
- PBPaul Bloom
I mean, the m-
- CWChris Williamson
... I- is-
- PBPaul Bloom
... the more you get of that, the better.
- CWChris Williamson
Th- another thing that I found when I wake up, 'cause I wake up to the same, uh, radio station every morning which is Classic FM in the UK, and when I wake up the news always comes on for about two minutes. And if I let myself stay awake with the radio on, with the alarm on, for longer than two minutes, whatever the song is, the first song that they choose, that song is in my head, I shit you not, for the next three hours. It is fucking imprinted in there. It's like someone's seared it into the back of my mind. And I'm so... I'd love to speak... I'll, m- must email Steven about it and find out what it is about the imprinting time that you have first thing in the morning. It is like nothing el-... It's like virgin fresh snow with a couple of footprints in it-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and I can't hear anything except for whatever that song was on a morning, and that's it. I'll hear it as I walk, as I'm doing my morning walk. It'll be to the rhythm of my feet on the floor. I'm like, "Oh, my God. This is like being trapped inside of my own mind." It's crazy.
- PBPaul Bloom
It's a great metaphor. It's... To some extent when we wake up it is, it is just fresh, fresh snow. Sometimes you wake up and for the first, at least for me, for the first second, two seconds, I don't even know where I am. Sometimes you wake up, at the very moment waking up, and you're... maybe you're caught in a dream, you don't even know who you are. And then the day accumulates, and then it piles up on you, and, um, and pretty soon by the end you're, uh, you're snow that, you know, that a whole elementary school is stomped all over.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
(laughs) That's, you know... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, so-
- PBPaul Bloom
It's a new theory as to why we need to sleep.
- CWChris Williamson
Why
- 32:14 – 39:37
Why Suffering is Important for a Meaningful Life
- CWChris Williamson
is suffering important for a meaningful life, then?
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. So we've been talking about, about pleasure and th- and, and that's not all. So, so here's the wrong way to think about it. I think the wrong way to think about it is, "Oh, I want a life of meaning, so I want to suffer. You know, I want to, um, I want to run a marathon and I'm really hoping to get blisters and to get ill and to, to, you know, to, to fail or whatever." It's not like that at all. I don't think people court suffering in that sort of way. You know, you w- you might train for a marathon, you just really wanna get better and run, run the marathon. But at the same time, people know that if it didn't have the possibility of failure and difficulty and struggle, it wouldn't be seen as meaningful. You don't want to fail, but on the other hand, the chance of failure has to be part and parcel of the thing. You and I are playing poker and, and, um, and if I sit down to play poker I want to win, obviously, but if I knew I was gonna win, if failure was impossible, I wouldn't even bother playing. It's too boring, you know? And there's this, this insight, uh, all... It shows up all over the place. Uh, Twilight Zone episodes and zen parables and everything. I'll, I'll tell you the zen... my favorite one. A- Alan Watts, um, is the guy who brought zen to, to, um... Did I... to the UK or to the United States? I'm not sure. Anyway.
- CWChris Williamson
British guy, but I don't know where he landed. Yeah.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes. Yes. I don't know where he landed, but, but, uh... But, so he tells this story, uh, and I, I remember this 'cause my partner and I were, were, uh, watching Avengers: Endgame and it came up at the beginning, they had a commercial for, for a bank and I'm d- whatever, watching it, and I said, "Wow, they had a voiceover saying this story and I... What the hell?" So I went home and Googled it and, and this, this, the story is imagine you fall, fell asleep and you found yourself in a lucid dream, you can dream whatever you want, for 75 years. He said, "Well, you'd have so much fun. You'd do everything, hedonistic blowout. You wake up, you live your day and then it happens again." Y- And he said, "Sooner or later you say, 'Well, this has all been a lot of fun, but it's getting a bit boring. I want to throw some struggle, some obstacles, some failure, some difficulty in it.'" He goes on and he talks about that and he says, "And if you think about it, maybe that's the life you're living now. You know, you have y- the, the life you would have chosen if you could choose any life, and all the difficulties and failures and disappointments, that's part of, part of the best life." And I think instinctively we appreciate that. We appreciate that a life full of meaning is a life full of risk and struggle and pain.
- CWChris Williamson
Can you remember the Twilight Zone story that you put in the book? 'Cause that is-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that is awesome.
- PBPaul Bloom
You get all the good ideas from the Twilight Zone. This, um, this mobster, this thug, I think a killer, dies. And to his surprise, he's seemingly in heaven. He's in, like, some gorgeous hotel suite and everything and, uh, he has a little angel by his side and, and he says, you know, "What is this?" "Well, you know, welcome to the afterlife." And he goes, "Wow. I'm hungry. I wish there was a feast in front of me." And boom, there's a feast in front of him. And he, he bets on sports and he always wins. Beautiful women flock to him. (snaps fingers) And he just loves it. And he stops playing and he says, says, "This is, this is ridiculous. I can't play a game. I can't... I'm, I'm going insane here." And finally he says to his guide, he says, you know, "I want to go to the other place. That's where I belong." And he says, "This is the other place. This is hell. And hell is where you get everything you want."
- CWChris Williamson
Man.
- PBPaul Bloom
I mean, it's kind of... it's a little bit Twilight Zone. I think hell would involve, you know, hot pogers and being burnt in sulfur, and that sounds pretty bad, too. But, but it's certainly not heaven. It's certainly not heaven. And I, I try to remind myself, you know, life, life contains a thousand disappointments and for each one you wish, "Pfft, I, I wish this wasn't happening." You know? My book, number one on the bestseller list, if I could snap my fingers, I would do that. But you gotta realize, and as you become an adult you realize it, it can't work that way. It's, it's this great paradox. You need, you need the specter of failure-... and difficulty and struggle and disappointment. You know, um, and this shows up all over the place. It shows up... It sounds like I'm just kind of spouting stories, but it shows up in... They did this study of two million people, uh, and they asked people what d- their, about their jobs, and then they asked them, "How meaningful is your job?" And the most meaningful jobs are hard jobs. They're, the most meaningful job is being a member of the clergy, working as a medical professional, of all different sorts is meaningful, social worker, educator. And often these jobs are low-status. They're often low-paying. But they're meaningful because you're helping people, you're making a difference, 'cause it's tough. The countries that, um, that, where the citizens say they're most meaningful... I mean, there's so much happiness research saying what countries are the happiest. And the answer is the richest countries. The richest, safest, best countries live in are the happiest. No surprise at all. But the countries that have the most, people say they have the most meaning, are the poorest countries. A meaningful life is positively correlated with low GDP, not high GDP, and with, with, you know, political turmoil, and it's hard to make a living, and you don't trust people around you. And I think there's different argu- different, um, theories as to what's going on here. But one thing is that struggle and meaning are intertwined. And if I had to choose, I'd rather live a life in a, in a sort of prosperous country where things are going well. But, but, um, there's some human needs that don't necessarily get scratched, uh, in a prosperous world.
- CWChris Williamson
What was the least fulfilling job?
- PBPaul Bloom
I think it was parking lot attendant.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) No one likes a parking lot attendant.
- PBPaul Bloom
No one likes the parking lot. You know, uh, sure there are worse jobs, but it does feel like, you know, it's hard to, to extract meaning from it. I mean, I'm gonna get all, all zen here. Uh, it's, it's, it's one of those zen things to say that any activity, you know, scrubbing toilets, cleaning dishes and everything, in the hands of the right person can have meaning. There's a story that's probably apocryphal of John, President John F. Kennedy touring, um, uh, NASA. And he stops when there's a janitor sweeping in the corner, and he says to the janitor, he said, "What do you do here?" And the janitor says, "I helped put men on the moon." And, you know, that's... There are stories of, of people who do, um, who do, who clean up in hospitals, who see their job as they should see it, as a job with dignity where they're helping sick people. And, um, and then I've seen people... I have had three people close to me quit, uh, tenured professor jobs. And I'm thinking, this is a job of unlimited freedom, autonomy, pays pretty good, you know, and you get to pursue whatever you want. And, and, and each of the three have said, "I find nothing of value here. No meaning, no purpose." And so your mileage may vary.
- 39:37 – 54:12
The Relationship Between Meaning & Pleasure
- PBPaul Bloom
- CWChris Williamson
What's the relationship between meaning and pleasure then?
- PBPaul Bloom
Um, you, you, you can... They are separable. There are people who live lives that they say are of great meaning and they don't have much pleasure in them. There are people who are, who, whose, who are, will describe themselves as hedonists and say they live life with great pleasure but there's no, no meaning or purpose. But they tend to be correlated, actually. It's kinda good news. Um, y- y- you might imagine you have to choose one or the other. But if you ask people, "How happy are you and how much fun are you having?" And then you also ask them, "How meaningful is your life, how much full of purpose is your life?" The answers will tend to correlate. There are people who are kinda high in both. Now, there's always trade-offs. This is one of the, this is one of the things about motivational pluralism. If, if, if motivational pluralism was wrong and all that mattered was hedonic pleasure, then, um, then life would be simple. Just seek out hedonic pleasure. But you have to balance things. You have to decide whether or not to, um, you know, jump in a cool swimming pool, or visit your sick aunt, or, you know, or practice the violin. You got these different priorities clashing with each other. And peoples differ in w- in how they, they establish the balance.
- CWChris Williamson
There's an interesting conflict here between Dan Kahneman's insights and Dan Gilbert's views on happiness. Can you go through that?
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. Um, Gilbert's a, Gilbert's a friend of mine, and, and a huge help with the book, 'cause he thinks my book is total nonsense. He thinks motivational pluralism is ridiculous, hedonism is the way to go. And, uh, and he's, like, spent a whole time pushing me and, and... well, as he wrote the book and... You know, he, you, you... There- there's no better person than Dan to, um, to be duking it out with as you try to think your way through. So here's the issue. And this is, this is the insights of, of, of Dan Kahneman, which is, um, there's two... When we say happiness or pleasure, there's two very different things. So one thing is what you could call experienced, experienced happiness. And the typical way to do this is you give somebody an iPhone and have it go off at random times during the day. And when it goes off, they say how happy they are. And so you have one and I have one and 500 other people have this. And then for each of us, we, we just a- we just sum up how happy we are from scale one to ten. Maybe whenever yours goes off, you're, you're an eight. Whenever mine goes off, I'm a four. You know, we... On average, eight. On average, four. You have more experienced happiness in your life than I do. But then there's something else we could do, which is we can just ask you, "How happy are you? How satisfied are you with your life? Where does it scan on a scale of one to ten?" You know, if ten is the perfect life and zero is a life not worth living, where are you? People give you a number in that too. Maybe your number is seven. Maybe my number is six. These numbers correlate. So your, your experienced happiness and your remembered happiness, um, uh, are related, not surprisingly.And they're both starting to respond to the same thing. So as your income goes up, they both go up. Diminishing returns, but they both go up. But they're different. You could be high in one and low in another. You could say, "I am living the best life," but most of the time in your life, you're doing difficult, unpleasant things, and so you're low in that. Or you could say, you live this, this, you know, this orgy of fun all the time, you're having a tremendous time. And then I sit and I ask you, "So, so what do you think of your life?" And you say, "Man, my life sucks. You know, I'm having a lot of pleasure, but I'm not adding anything to it. I'm a parasite, I'm a loser." You feel really sad. And then you go back to your, your sex and your drugs and your rock and roll, and you're really happy. So the question is, which one should we maximize, if you choose? And Kahneman says, uh, you should maximize your remembered happiness, your judgment. That's what people wanna do. People don't just wanna party and have a good time. They wanna, um, they wanna be think- they're living a worthwhile, valuable life. Uh, Dan Gilbert says you should maximize the day-to-day stuff, your day-to-day experience. You know, if you spend 95% of your time having a really good time, and then 5% of the time I ask you, "So how is your life?" And you say, "Oh, my life is disappointing and it sucks." Well, on balance, you're way ahead of the game. Don't take too seriously your, your contemplative perspective. And I'm more on Danny Kahneman's side, but, uh, because I'm not a hedonist. I think, I think there's in- there- there's a real... If, if me or somebody I loved, um, lived their life, say, totally blitzed out on heroin, and suppose they could do it in such a way it had no side effects, they just were just en- drooling with delight the whole time, I'd say, "Man, what a waste. That's not a good life. That's a crap life." You know, do you remember the example from, uh, Robert Nozick of The Experience Machine? It's this great example where he asks people, "I could..." You know, here's the deal. Got a machine here. Go like, "You lie down, I plug you into the machine, and you will experience this life of extraordinary pleasure and satisfaction for the rest of your life, the rest of your natural life. You lie here, we have tubes giving you food, and you'll have the s- best dream ever. Do you wanna do that?" And Nozick says, "Absolutely not." He says, "I don't wanna think I fell in love, I wanna fall in love. I don't wanna think I climbed Mount Everest, I wanna climb Mount Ever- I wanna make a difference in the world." And m- many people, including me, wouldn't go into the machine, even though we would get less pleasure. Now, I got to admit, there are some people who say, "Yeah, plug me in, man. Um, I would." But I think most of us wouldn't. Would you?
- CWChris Williamson
No, I wouldn't.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I thought about this long and hard.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
One of the things that I've got in my head, so the Dan Gilbert, uh, thought experiment, he says if you are contemplating for 5% of your life and you are reminded of the fact that you've lived it in a swimming pool for ages and you're going to feel bad, then you've got 95% that's good.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
This seems to be a selection effect for the sort of people typically that I associate with hedonists.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
The people who are less ruminative, the ones that do less contemplation, the ones that are less introspective. Whereas the people that I know who are more introspective seem to be more concerned with meaning. Now, perhaps that's the outcome, they've managed to find a mode of attaining meaning over pleasure, because pleasure would be reflected on more, which would not give them an actual sense of being well-lived. Have you considered that?
- PBPaul Bloom
If you're right, it's solved. Everybody gets what they want. The hedonist is- doesn't reflect at all and lives a life of pleasure, um. The, the, somebody focused on meaning and purpose wouldn't enjoy all that time in a pool anyway 'cause they'd be too busy thinking about meaning and purpose. So they, then, then they get what they want. But yeah, I, I think that's clever. I like that. But you can't make the problem go away. So here's one from, from Danny Kahneman, which is-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
Here's one of Danny Kahneman. It turns out that you have a really fun one-week vacation and you have a really fun two-week vacation. And later on, I ask you, "How was your vacation? How do you remember it?" And you would think, if we were in some way rational and w- and our remembered happiness was based on the sum of experienced happiness, um, you would think that, um, you would remember the second, the two-week one as twice as good as the first, the one-week one, 'cause it's twice as much fun. But we don't. We say, "It was a nice vacation, man. It was good." You, it's what he calls duration neglect. Same for bad experiences. You know, I've sometimes been on a plane with, you know, no wifi and I forgot to bring a book and I'm uncomfortable, I'm in the middle seat and everything like that. And eight hours is twice as bad as four hours. But you're back at the hotel, all you remember was, "That flight sucked." And it doesn't suck twice as much. So again, you have to question on what to maximize. So some people say, "Wow, that means I should take short vacations, because I'm gonna remember them the same anyway." And other people think, "Are you crazy? Who cares what you remember? It's what you experience."
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. The interesting thing here, I thought about the remembering and the experiencing self a lot, and I came to the perhaps incorrect conclusion that because the remembering self lasts for far longer than the experiencing self, that optimizing for the remembering self makes sense, especially when you're younger.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So there's actually an argument to be made that you should become more hedonic as you get toward old age.
- PBPaul Bloom
Also 'cause you run out of time to reflect.
- CWChris Williamson
Precisely.
- PBPaul Bloom
You know, if I have an- if I have another six months to go, I shouldn't be piling up good memories.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, everyone knows this.
- PBPaul Bloom
I should just live it.
- CWChris Williamson
Everybody knows this. Everyone knows this intrinsically. What would you do if it was your last day on Earth? "Oh, I'd steal a car and I'd get in an airplane and I'd do this thing."
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, what is that?
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's because you're going to sacrifice suffering and meaning in place of pleasure. So everyone in, in intrinsically understands this. But yeah, I think...Certainly for me, with my constitution, I would just optimize as much as possible for living a life that, when remembered, it l- it feels like a life-
- 54:12 – 1:02:26
How Wealth Affects Happiness
- PBPaul Bloom
of sad.
- CWChris Williamson
Talking about, um, wealth and the relationship between wealth and meaning and happiness and satisfaction, what's the true red-pill story about the relationship between wealth and happiness? Because I didn't realize that there was another-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... there was another element to the after-a-particular-level-your-happiness-doesn't-increase-anymore story.
- PBPaul Bloom
It, it's, so, it used to be, and, and soon enough, it used to be, uh, even when I taught Intro to Psych many years ago, I used to say, "Isn't it amazing? Money is unconnected to happiness," which is what people believed. And then, it turns out, no, that's not true. More money you have, the happier you are, both as individuals and also countries. Richer countries have happier people. And if you think about it, it's kind of weird we could have ever imagined it would be otherwise. Money-... buys you all sorts of things. It buys you, in a country like the United States, it helps, it buys you health. It buys you... And everywhere, it buys you security, safety, travel, time with friends, freedom from exploitation, cool stuff. It's just, it's, it... There's a lot of things to be said for money. But then the story was, uh, that it, it tops out at a certain amount. And I think in the United States, when the study was done, it was about $80,000 a year, and then more money doesn't help. And, uh, that would be like maybe $120,000 right now. And, um, and then more studies started to come in. And it's by no means clear it's true. There were studies finding that millionaires make... are happier than people who have half a million. And even a study finding that people who have over $10 million are happier than people have, who have between one and $10 million. The, the difference is not huge. I mean, it makes sense that money would mat-... That the difference between making 20,000 and 40,000 is enormous. The difference between making, you know, 520,000 and 540,000 is tiny. They're just diminishing returns, kind of, you do on a, on a log scale. But still, there's reason to believe that y- the more money you get, the happier you are, all the way up as far up as we can measure it. And I think part of this is because that money's tied to status, and status makes us happy, you know? If, if, you know, if, if you have 100 million and I have 50 million and, um, and we both know this, you might be happier. You might just say, "Man, I got more money than this guy." Even though it might be hard to think of anything tangible you could do that I can't do.
- CWChris Williamson
I was talking about universal basic income with a behavioral geneticist called-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... Catherine Page Harden. And she-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. I'm a big fan of Paige Harden's work.
- CWChris Williamson
She, she's great. I really, really enjoyed that conversation with her. Um, but I put to her the... one of the challenges around her proposed safety net for people, that they shouldn't fall below with regards to income, because there is a minimum level of humanness that everybody is allowed to have.
- PBPaul Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
My argument was, and this is something that I hadn't thought of before, because we are inherently status-seeking creatures, I don't think that there is a level of UBI that will make people satisfied. I think that you get status-seeking immediately from everybody. And as soon as you see the person that decides to work as well as get UBI, or work instead of get UBI, gets more than you, immediately, until you've completely flattened that curve, there is an argument to be made that no one's going to be happy until we have everybody at, whatever it is, number 7,000,700,000 and duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Um-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah, that was an interesting one, thinking about how status plays into... Status is, is contrary to this sort of utilitarian approach for money.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes. And, in some way, I think it's a good thing. So, put aside the details of UBI, because there's a lot of debate over this and how to do it. But imagine UBI or, or any sort of excellent safety net welfare system. Uh, the argument there is people will come out of it, um, you know, well-fed, and get medical care, and have housing. They don't have to go camping. They just... And, and everything is all... The basic needs are satisfied, their children are safe. And that's terrific. Will it make them happy? Um, certainly happier than, you know, they have if they're dying of an untreated infection. Um, but happy? I don't know. I think a lot of happiness is tied into, um, status, and also tied into accomplishment in ways which, which cross-cut it. Um, you know, I would rather be, um... Uh, I have a guest, had a, somebody who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Even if she doesn't make that much money, is, is a lot happier and satisfied than some hedge fund manager. But you're right, money itself will not... could satisfy your basic needs, and it's, it's plainly a plus, but it's, but there's more. And, and UBI will n-... The, the problem with status, by the way, which is, is that it's inherently zero sum. It gets compli-... The only thing that makes them... So, so if you're at the top, I'm not at the top, and somebody gotta be at the bottom. The only thing that, that ameliorates that concern, which is kind of alike, and it's, it's a position that Will Wilkinson, who's a policy expert, pointed out, though I think he now doesn't believe it, is that one of the good things about capitalism is that there could be a whole lot of status hierarchies. So, you know, maybe, um, maybe you make more money than me, but, uh, my kids are better looking. Maybe, you know, maybe you're in better shape, but, but check out all the Pokemon, uh, cards I've collected, you know. And, and so in a, in a good world, any schmo can find a place where they get at least, they do, they do fair enough, they get respect. And, um, and none of... very little of this has to do with money in it. Money will satisfy the basic needs. But, but it's nice to have a world... And I don't think I'm disagreeing with Paige Harden here, nice to have a world where the mo-... The, the very, the very uneven distribution of gifts that people possess is set up so that everybody has a chance to do pretty well in some domain or another.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It was an interesting conversation. I really, really enjoyed... I, I found her fascinating because she comes at behavioral genetics, which, for better or worse, is a subject area that has been adopted by people that are more right-leaning, and she has a quite a left-leaning perspective about how she wants the country to be run, and so on and so forth.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
One of the things that I realized was that a lot of the problems that she was highlighting could just be fixed by having a better government.So for instance, she brought up healthcare and she said that healthcare should be available to all. To make it available to all, you need to have sufficient money and UBI so that people can pay for their healthcare. I was like, "Well, we fixed that problem in the UK and we don't have UBI."
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
We've just nationalized healthcare. So then if you can nationalize a bunch of other things and you end up with everyone's got a soup kitchen that delivers direct to their door-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... through some fancy teleporting technology in a hundred years time, and you can just teleport food into everyone's houses. Then you go, okay, there could be a point where you get to where you don't need UBI and all of her requirements for this minimum level of humanness-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is met. But you still have this desire for status, and it's inherently going to be unfulfilling. I don't think that UBI can counter against status. And, as you said as well, this desire for accomplishment and to feel like you're actually achieving something. Um, th- this is the thing that people always bring up, that you spend all of this time on the couch and you just think that the people who no longer need to work are... they're going to go out into the fields and start writing poetry. Um, I, I think that there is... I know that the, the helplessness and the sense of, of, uh, pointlessness is potentially going to, going to come in. Some people find, even from a shitty job, they find meaning, you know?
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Some of the ones that you talk... I've got friends that are nurses and doctors, and they will self-describe their jobs as shitty. They'll tell me they're doing a 70-hour week and they'll hate it, but they get a huge amount of meaning from it. So yeah, it's a, it's an interesting blend.
- 1:02:26 – 1:08:44
The Role of Sacrifice in Meaning
- CWChris Williamson
You, you talked about something that I thought was quite interesting as well, the role of sacrifice. What is the, the place of sacrifice? Why does it play a role here?
- PBPaul Bloom
You think of it in a religious context or-
- CWChris Williamson
No, in the book.
- PBPaul Bloom
Um, so I, I have a, a discussion of sacrifice in the context of religion, and in the context... And again, I mean, when I talk about it, I get into a topic you and I haven't discussed yet, which is, um, which is, what do you do with unchosen suffering? So right now we've been just talking about the trade-offs people give, the way people choose in order to get pleasure, the way people, the choices people make in order to get meaning and morality and purpose. But, um, but often a lot of the suffering we have in life is unchosen. And there, I'm, I'm actually a lot less optimistic. I'm not one of these people who think, "Oh, chosen, eh, you know, bad stuff happens to you, you get stronger, you get more resilient, you do post-traumatic growth." I don't deny this happens some of the time, but, um, but it, it, it is, uh, by far not, uh, a regular psychological rule. We tend to be more resilient than we think we are. But growth, I'm skeptical about it. And then you get frameworks where we try to explain this, we try to make sense of things. You know, some people think that we've invented religion because we want to figure out where the universe came from, where animals came from, and, and, and natural phenomena. But I don't think we care that much about those things. Sometimes scientists, scholars do. But we care deeply about why we suffer, and why is it you and not me, or me and not you? Um, why did this person die and not that person? And religion provides a framework, and a lot of religious rituals and religious activities are attempts to manipulate the laws of fate. This includes sacrifice, it includes a lot of chosen suffering with the context of religion, where you're trying to sort of take away the randomness from the world.
- CWChris Williamson
You want to lend a cohesive narrative that explains why something's happened.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. And, you know, so one narrative is, you know, everything happens for a reason. That's not really a narrative, it's just saying there is a narrative. And, and, um, I think... I've done actually some research with this, uh, wonderful person, Konika Banerjee is my student. And we, um, we asked people to remember significant events of the last couple of years where, um, you know, good events like weddings, children being born, bad events like death of loved ones. And then we asked them, "Is there a narrative? Does it happen for a reason? Did it happen to send you a message?" And, um, and what we find is religious people are much more likely than atheists to say yes. But even atheists, um, will often say yes to this, will often see a, a narrative behind it. And of course, religion provides a narrative. It wasn't random. God is testing you. You are reliving the suffering of Christ. Um, God, we ignore God when he whispers, but, but, but he comes in loud and clear when we suffer. And it is a way of, of calling his attention, calling our attention to him, and so on and so forth. Um, it's what, to go back to Dan Gilbert, part of what we call a psychological immune system, which is we're often much better than we think we are at dealing with bad stuff, because we're very quick to tell a story in which it actually isn't bad. But I gotta say, I actually think, you know, "It happens for a reason," is kind of a, often a very corrosive, very bad thing to believe. I think it can reassure us, but it could also lead us to be cruel to others. You know, you have cancer. "Man, it happens for a reason. What did you do to deserve that? Or maybe it'll make you grow. Good news, pal." You know, it's this, it, it leads to... Y- I think we have to acknowledge between adults that often the best response is, "Man, that sucks. That's just bad, shitty luck. I'm so sorry." Um, and it also leads to sort of passivity, where there's a whole lot of suffering in the world. And to say that suffering is there for a reason, it's God's will, is a recipe for doing nothing.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a part of me that feels a little bit uncomfortable when someone goes through something and they look back on it and say that this happened for a reason, because look at the position that I'm in now.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And the reason that I don't like it when people give those explanations is it takes away the agency and the glory from what they did to turn that bad situation into the good one that they're now in.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, you, you'd say that this thing happened. You got into a car crash. Everybody, everybody that got into a really bad car wreck, uh, three years ago, and now he's in this awesome design position at Apple, and he's got all of this stuff. And he's never said that, but I can imagine in a different world, somebody that said-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... "You know, look at, look at where this particular accident got me to, and now I'm in this amazing situation. I'm working for Apple, and I've got my strength back, and I'm running, and I'm training, I'm doing this stuff." Uh, well, what's the difference between that caused you to be in this situation and you overcame that situation to now have this life that you're so happy about leading?
- PBPaul Bloom
I agree. It- it ... That sort of narrative takes the credit away from the person who, um ... You know, (sighs) to think, to think that I got in this car accident and that catapulted me into my career strips you of- of- of- of the credit you deserve for the fact that- that- that, no, you- you ended up, uh, having to struggle and having to recover. But- so that in one way, it's an awful thing for somebody to say. On the other hand, if you don't say something like that, it forces you to confront the terrible randomness of life, which is just- just freaking terrible. I mean, anybody you love could be snatched away in a second, you know? Anytime your phone rings, it could be the worst news in the world. And if there's no narrative, that's what we're stuck with.
- 1:08:44 – 1:15:48
What is Compensatory Control?
- PBPaul Bloom
- CWChris Williamson
Have you heard of com- compensatory control?
- PBPaul Bloom
I can guess what it is, but- but- but, uh, make me not guess. So-
- CWChris Williamson
I saw this-
- PBPaul Bloom
... what is that?
- CWChris Williamson
... a year ago. So it's Matthew Syed, he wrote a piece in The Times. Uh, "Why conspiracy theories and demagogues spread in times of worry and uncertainty. Psychologists have cons- uh, cons- conducted experiments to shed light on why people lose or at least suspend rationality. One experiment asked people to imagine going to a doctor to hear an uncertain medical diagnosis. Such people were significantly more likely to express the belief that God was in control of their lives. Another asked participants to imagine a time of deep uncertainty, when they feared for their jobs or the health of their children. They were far more likely to see a pattern in meaningless static or to infer that two-"
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"... random events were connected. This is such a common finding that psychologists have given it a name: compensatory control. When uncertain, when randomness upon our li- uh, intrudes upon our lives, we respond by reintroducing order in some way. Superstitions and conspiracy theories speak to this need. It is not enough to accept that important events are- are shaped by random forces. This is why it makes much more sense to believe that our lives are threatened by the grand plan of some malign scientist than the chance mutation of a silly little microbe."
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. That rings true. And- and it explains, you know, what would otherwise be paradoxical, which is after terrible things happen, you would imagine people would abandon their faith. You know, if you believe in a loving God protecting you, and then, you know, you lose family to 9/11 or the pandemic or whatever, just kind of makes sense to say, "Well, I'm gonna lower- lower- lower the priors on that belief of a loving, protective God." It's exactly the opposite. You know, bad things happen and people's- and people's belief strengthens. And I think it is a desire for, um, for control, for a narrative, and- and a more of a willingness, a propensity to see it. And then sometimes you get, and I think some of this is Adam Galinsky's work, you get- um, you get- there's a- a sort of hoping to fiddle with things, hoping to use karma productively. So in some studies, before somebody's about to go through- discover, um, whether or not they have a- an illness or before they go to apply for a job, they're more likely to donate to charity. Kind of thinking at some level, maybe not even consciously, that, well, this will tip the goods. You know, this will, uh, this will get the deity's attention, and- and his love will shine upon me and give me good fortune. And that- and you know, you talk about- we- we push back and forth about rational/irrational. I think a lot of that's fairly (laughs) irrational, but it- it is a- it is a powerful tendency.
- CWChris Williamson
Are there any stories from the book that were your favorites that we haven't touched on?
- PBPaul Bloom
Oh gosh, we- we, um, we hit a lot of them. Um, I think we- I think we, uh, we hit them on, you know ... My- I- I love the- the fact that, uh, over and over again, the same things converge. Viktor Frankl and, um ... Have we talked about Viktor Frankl, you and I?
- CWChris Williamson
Nope, not yet.
- PBPaul Bloom
So- so we'll end with that then, um, 'cause this is- um, my subtitle, The Search for Meaning, is a- is a shout-out to his book Man's Search for Meaning. So he was a- a- a Jew in Austria, was a psychiatrist who, um, worked with suicide, suicidal adolescents. And, uh, when Hitler came to power, he could have left, but he didn't. His- his elderly parents were, uh, were there, and they couldn't- they couldn't leave. And he ended up getting swooped up and caught in concentration camps in, uh, Dachau and Auschwitz. And he was always a scientist, and he asked himself the question, "What distinguishes the people who kill themselves or give up?" They just stop eating or they actively kill them- they run, you know, they- they- they make a run for it knowing they're gonna be shot and so on, "from those who are resilient and those who hold on?" And he said, "It's not like cheerfulness or any obvious personality trait. It's whether or not you possess meaning and, uh, that you have a- a reason to live." You know, some- some sort of quote that, uh, those who find the why in life can bear with almost any how. And- um, and I feel this- uh, this jibes well with a lot of the way people are thinking about it and the way I've sort of built my book around.
- CWChris Williamson
The story ... Is it Viktor Frankl that talks about the stories of when they were made to move bags of wet salt or sand from one side of the-... encampment to the other, and then once they had done, they were just told to move it back. Is that premised-
- PBPaul Bloom
I don't remember that story, but, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I know that s- that the story that I'm pulling it from is some Jewish concentration camp in World War II. And the point was that there was no inherent meaning in the work.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Because once you'd moved it, it was moved back. And I'm not the most DIY handyman person in the world. I'm waiting for whatever switch my dad has to drop in the back of my head. But my business partner's opening a bar in Newcastle where I live, and I offered my time, useless as it is, to say, "Look, I will come and paint walls and clean up and sand things and do whatever." And as I was doing it, I don't s- I haven't s- done work like this for a long time. You know, two full days of manual labor, of sanding wa-, uh, concrete walls to give them a nice shine, or cleaning stuff up, or whatever it might be. And, um, upon doing that, it, I reflected on the work of Jewish concentration camp, uh, prisoners being made to do something that is so pointless. Because even at the end of the day of this work that was pretty mind-numbing, apart from the fact I had some good podcasts on, um, I was able to look at this wall and say, "That's the, that's the fucking, that's the back wall of this bar."
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And it looks, it looks really quite nice, actually. And I've, I didn't paint it, and I didn't plaster it, and I, I didn't do any of the other stuff, but I had a tiny little bit of a contribution. And now every time that I go into this bar, I'll be able to look at that wall and think, "I, I fucking, I did that. For a day and a half, I did that."
- PBPaul Bloom
You helped put, you helped put a man on the moon. You were like a-
- CWChris Williamson
I, I helped open a bar. Yeah, exactly.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. Um, the, we, we were looking at the British cover, the UK cover is a, is of, of the book, is, oh, thank you, is like the face. And it's a gorgeous, gorgeous cover. But the American cover, I guess I'll send you a picture, is different. And it is, uh, a picture of, uh, Sisyphus, the famous, the, the, the famous myth. And the myth is, is, is the story you're telling of the concentration camps of, uh, someone condemned to roll a boulder up the hill. And when it, and before it gets to the top, it rolls down, and, you know, rinse and repeat for eternity. And, you know, meaning requires an end point. You don't have to make it to the end point. You know, your work would be satisfying even if the bar was shuttered halfway through. But you have to be working towards the end point. You have to be working towards a goal. And without that, you know, work ceases to be satisfying and just becomes misery.
- 1:15:48 – 1:17:06
How to Apply ‘The Sweet Spot’
- PBPaul Bloom
- CWChris Williamson
If you were going to apply The Sweet Spot, if you were gonna do Applied Sweet Spot, are there any takeaways that you think should inform people of how they live or view their lives? Or has it affected the way that you look at yours at all?
- PBPaul Bloom
I'm not a, (laughs) I'm not a takeaway kind of guy for this. Uh, it's, it... The book is really, honestly, is an exploration of why we do what we do, and less of talent. My last book about empathy was more in your face and telling people to do stuff. And I just wanted this kind of stepping back. However, um, yeah, I've become more appreciative of flow. "I'm gonna read a book, uh, you recommended, um, that of, of, of getting flow." And I've also became more familiar with the literature suggesting that regardless of whether hedonism, pleasure, happiness, is the right goal. Um, seeking pleasure and happiness seems to be kind of a dead end. Uh, you know, there's a strong relationship between people who think seeking happiness is very important and people who end up depressed and anxious and very unhappy. I think happiness and pleasure is a goal, but it's the kind of goal you get while you're doing other things. So, um, so, so working on a book has made me appreciate more the parts of my life that aren't that much fun, but are directed towards a purpose and a goal.
- 1:17:06 – 1:17:53
Where to Find Paul
- CWChris Williamson
Love it. Paul Bloom, ladies and gentlemen. The Sweet Spot: Suffering, Pleasure, and the Key to a Good Life will be linked in the show notes below. And if people want to harass you on the internet, where should they go?
- PBPaul Bloom
Uh, they should probably hit me up on Twitter. I'm still, uh, PaulBloom@Yale. Uh, I go to m-
- CWChris Williamson
PaulBloom@NoLongerAtYale. PaulBloom@Toronto.
- PBPaul Bloom
PaulBloom@NoLonger... Yeah, yeah, but I, I lose my blue check mark if I change the, the Twitter handle.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
So, and on my web- my webpage, PaulBloom.net.
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing. Thanks, Paul.
- PBPaul Bloom
Uh, thanks. This has been tons of fun. Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.
Episode duration: 1:17:54
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