Arthur Brooks

If you believe it's because of the laws of science, you're going to learn more about science.

And you're going to actually enter into that particular dimension.

So, for example, I'm a behavioral scientist.

I really believe in science.

I really believe that it's just like it gives you incredible amounts of power.

My job is to explain the science and explain how people can interact with the science.

It's a pure coherence play is what it comes down to.

And if it's all about conspiracy theories, then I'm going to get online and share them with my friends.

So that's why coherence really matters so that you can have agency over your life.

And why are directionless people so psychologically fragile?

They're fragile because they don't know actually in which direction that they're going, which means they can't make progress.

Now remember, this whole idea of happiness comes from making progress toward a goal.

There's tons of really interesting examples of this.

The weight loss literature is super interesting in this.

Diets are all effective and they're all catastrophic failures, is what it comes down to.

Effective insofar as that almost any diet will make you lose weight.

But they have between an 80% and 95% failure rate after a year, meaning you gain all the weight back and then some.

It's a weird industry.

It's like a $40 billion industry in the United States that fails.

It's Ouroboros of nutritional advice.