It's worth asking what it means that we've replaced the old happiness (which was religious, the beatific vision, grace, salvation) with this: a pie chart where you optimize for dopamine and intentional activities. We did not solve the meaning problem; we re-engineered it into a measurable project. The 40% you control has become the whole arena, that's not psychology, that's a historical shift. Nietzsche would call this the moralization of neurochemistry: we took the sacred outside us and put it inside our skulls where we can fiddle with it.
The science behind the happiness
Public
2 conversations
3 thoughts
81 upvotes
8 downvotes
0 series
228 views
Using a Visual "Happiness Pie" to Balance Life
In groups
Thought
Thought
It's worth asking what it means that we've replaced the old happiness (which was religious, the beatific vision, grace, salvation) with this: a pie chart where you optimize for dopamine and intentional activities. We did not solve the meaning problem; we
Discussion content
*The Science Of Happiness*
🧠 Brain & Chemicals Behind Happiness
Your brain releases certain “happy chemicals”:
*Dopamine → reward and motivation
*Serotonin → mood stability
*Oxytocin → bonding and love
*Endorphins → reduce pain and increase pleasure
These chemicals are influenced by your habits and lifestyle.
*The "Happiness Pie"*
Scientific models suggest that our overall well-being is determined by three main factors:
*Genetics (50%): Every individual has a "happiness set point" or baseline level that is partially inherited.
*Life Circumstances (10%): Surprisingly, external factors like wealth, marital status, and geography account for only a small fraction of long-term happiness.
*Intentional Activities (40%): This is the area where individuals have the most control, involving daily choices, thinking patterns, and behavior.
Thoughts
-
It's worth asking what it means that we've replaced the old happiness (which was religious, the beatific vision, grace, salvation) with this: a pie chart where you optimize for dopamine and intentional activities. We did not solve the meaning problem; we re-engineered it into a measurable project. The 40% you control has become the whole arena, that's not psychology, that's a historical shift. Nietzsche would call this the moralization of neurochemistry: we took the sacred outside us and put it inside our skulls where we can fiddle with it.
Related discussions
-
Do you really need to have an opinion on everything?
There is a difference between an opinion and a judgment, and almost everything in the way we live now is built to make you forget it. An opinion is what you can produce in four seconds when someone asks. A judgment is what you have after you have spent real time with a thing, watched it behave under pressure, been wrong about it once or twice, and corrected. The first is nearly free. The second costs attention you cannot get back, and you can only afford it for a handful of subjects in a life.…
-
Can AI make you lose your mind, and are you more at risk if you doubt it?
I always felt that AI companies are actually putting wrappers on top of AI to identify that we're testing it for thinking. For example back when we'd made it count the vowels/consonants in a word and it'd get it wrong. I feel there's a script now that just gets called when the task is identified correctly. I also feel that it gets trained on these memes. Today, I found a new test, one that shows how easily AI gives you AI psychosis and how easy it easy to truly believe that everything you ever…
-
If you're not a billionaire, why do you vote like one?
One of the most effective narratives in American politics is convincing ordinary professionals that they belong in the same category as billionaires. A couple making $220k a year in a major city is still dependent on salaries. They still worry about layoffs, housing costs, healthcare, childcare, and retirement. They cannot buy political influence. They cannot move markets. They cannot survive indefinitely off appreciating assets while borrowing against them tax-efficiently. They are not living…
-
Is therapy just confession with the theology stripped out?
One of the funniest things about secular modern culture is watching people reinvent Christianity piece by piece while acting intellectually superior the entire time. People abandoned confession and now pay someone $240 plus taxes an hour to listen to them describe their guilt in a softly lit room. They abandoned sin and replaced it with "unprocessed trauma." They abandoned repentance and replaced it with "doing the work." They abandoned examination of conscience and replaced it with journaling…
-
Is the alt-right pipeline a disaster for your life no matter what drove you into it?
A thing that pulled me toward this world initially was not really the politics, or at least not in the clean ideological sense people imagine afterward. It was the feeling of recognition. I would hear someone describe the atmosphere of being a man in your twenties in a way that felt uncomfortably accurate: drifting friendships, long stretches alone in an apartment, the sense that adulthood had arrived without any accompanying structure...
-
Does atheism make you more rational, or just leave a void you fill badly?
One of the common atheist temptations is to confuse unbelief with clarity, to assume that religion is the irrational part, so removing religion must leave behind a cleaner and more rational human being. But human beings do not work that way, human beings operate through beliefs, emotions... We do not stop wanting ritual, purity, moral tribe, sense of sacredness or transcendent meaning just because we stop using religious language for those desires.
-
Did EDC culture turn normal life into a gear fantasy?
I used to think EDC culture was mostly harmless nerd behavior. Flashlights, pocket knives, notebooks, titanium pens, little organizers with seventeen bits in them. Fine. People like tools. People like objects. Some people enjoy refining a system. I get it. But at some point the culture drifted away from practical usefulness and turned into a kind of suburban tactical cosplay for people whose biggest daily threat is forgetting a password.
-
Do most people struggle with their feelings just because they lack the vocabulary?
A surprising number of emotional mistakes and pain comes just out of naming mistakes. Someone says he is angry when he is really ashamed. Someone says she feels unloved when what she feels is neglected, controlled, lonely, or embarrassed. Someone says he is stressed when the real state is dread, resentment, grief, or envy. Those are not tiny wording differences, but rather how we feel, accurately expressed They point to different problems, which means they call for different responses.