Episode 2669 CWSA 11/24/24 — Scott Adams Philosophy

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

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nd their fans. But you can't create a sketchy financial product and associate it with my name and my brand and then push me to boost it. Do you understand that you put me at great financial and other risk? Because if other people see the Dilbert name on it, they're going to say, well, that's probably endorsed by Scott, and therefore it's probably safe. He probably looked into it. I did not look in…

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will accept "I didn't know that was going to be a problem." That would be perfectly acceptable. I just can't have it exist, so you need to get rid of it. Got that?

All right, so I didn't even want to talk about it, but stay away from that thing.

All right. Here's a study from Gilmore Health News. Pursuing happiness as a goal often fails to make people happier. Here's why I think that makes sense. The reason you can't pursue happiness is it's not a thing. You can't pursue happiness. You could pursue a wild animal. You could pursue a ball that's rolling down a hill. You could pursue a car. You could pursue a dog, because those are all real. But happiness, you can't pursue. You could end up happy, but you can't pursue happiness.

There are two things you can pursue that'll get you there. You can pursue meaning. Meaning, so you're doing something that's helpful to other people. Usually it's being useful. You're either having children and you're doing a good job of being a parent, or you're doing a job that's important to the world, or you're inventing something, or you're doing what Elon Musk is doing, trying to save the world from debt and or at least the country. And those could give you meaning. But if the only thing you did were hard work, it wouldn't make you very happy either, because you'd just be burned out and there wouldn't be much left of you.

So here's the Scott formula for happiness. You can't chase it. Don't chase it. But you can let it happen by doing other things that are right. So I would say you want to spend about 80% of your time chasing meaning. Now that could include the time it takes you to tie your shoes and put your clothes on and shave in the morning or put your hair together, because that's all important to getting anything done. But the 80% should be making sure that it's directed at some kind of useful something.

Now if you're young, you don't have as many opportunities. So I would say if you're on a dating app and you're trying to date and your ambition is to someday have a family, that's great. Then dating is exactly

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what you should be doing, even if it doesn't look like this specific date is working out. You're chasing meaning. That's still good. If you're chasing meaning 80% of the time and then 20% of the time you're chasing pleasure, you're going to be fine. If you chased pleasure 80% of the time, you're going to be Dan Bilzerian and eventually say, you know what, turns out that sleeping with five women a…

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Wisdom from this episode

"The reason you can't pursue happiness is it's not a thing. You can't pursue happiness. You could pursue a wild animal. You could pursue a ball that's rolling down a hill. You could pursue a car. You could pursue a dog, because those are all real. But happiness, you can't pursue. You could end up happy, but you can't pursue happiness."

Happiness is not a tangible target you can chase like a physical object; you can only create the conditions for it to arise as a byproduct.

"Here's the Scott formula for happiness. You can't chase it. Don't chase it. But you can let it happen by doing other things that are right. So I would say you want to spend about 80% of your time chasing meaning."

Stop trying to pursue happiness directly. Instead devote the majority of your time to meaningful pursuits that help others, and allow happiness to emerge naturally.