Arthur Brooks

that is an expression of the idea that no no we're gonna hit the singularity man we're gonna live forever we're gonna be actually be able to figure out how to upload our brains we're going to be able to solve any problem with whatever app or doodad or or or

supplement or whatever it happens to be that we will have the scientific acumen to solve everything that actually is a problem in our lives and that's just axiomatically wrong and how do i know that because we're solving more and more of these problems and we're getting less and less and less happy it's the same kind of thing to say for example if we had enough therapists we wouldn't have any more depression well depression has tripled and the number of therapists has tripled

So what's going on here?

Obviously there's a cause and effect problem and a glitch in our logic.

Yeah, and you know, there's nothing wrong with these big why questions.

The problem is having these big why questions and believing that if you watch enough internet videos and take enough supplements that you'll be able to answer these things.

And this is one of the, this is a big generational difference that we actually find.

There, every philosophical school of note and of merit has something of the ancient Greeks called aporia, which is to sit in a state of puzzlement over questions that can't be answered.

So Zen Buddhism is based on koans.

Koans are riddles.

You know, what is the sound of one hand clapping?

And a strange, unanswerable question.

You're supposed to ponder that.

And in the pondering, you gain a certain kind of complex knowledge, which we know is, you know, the dominantly processed in the right hemisphere of the brain, right?

A big generational difference is that what's missing for a lot of people's lives today is that at night with their friends, they're not having these BS philosophical conversations about big questions that can't be answered.

That was what you did.

At 1130, after you came home from a party with your friends in college in 1985, is it like, I don't know, dude, do you think God exists?

Right?

It's like, wow, dude.

And now it's like, so we've stopped doing that one thing.