Tim Ferriss

There are different types of safety you could have.

That could be physical safety.

That could be a social net of some type with healthcare, as would be the case, say, in Denmark, for instance.

Those things combined,

which offer a certain level of predictability.

Not predictability across the board, but... I'm not sure how heavily to weight various polls and happiness reports, but you might have, say, for instance, a few years ago, you had Singapore, which is a fascinating little country, right?

A little postage stamp, but, like, from swamp to what it's become is fascinating.

So Lee Kuan Yew and so on.

Nonetheless, like highly structured, quite strict, predictable, but purportedly a high level of self-reported happiness.

Okay.

Then you take that and you compare it to say Denmark, and you could point out a lot of differences, but if you talk to Danes about why they might rank highly on these happiness report cards,

you'll get some serious responses, mostly around, like, the social safety net, frankly, specifically as it relates to healthcare, I would say.

And physical safety, so they don't have to worry about their kids running around outside, et cetera.

I did have one friend

because you might guess from the size of my head, I've got some Scandinavian genes.

So one of my Danish friends, he was like, I said, why are you guys so happy on these reports?

And he goes, low expectations.

Now, I think there's actually something deeply profound about that in a way.

Low expectations?

Well, if happiness is... If happiness is...