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“(1) reward is not contentment, and pleasure is not happiness; (2) reward is dopamine, and contentment is serotonin; (3) chronic excess reward interferes with contentment; (4) business has conflated pleasure with happiness consciously and with clear-cut intent, specifically to get you to buy its junk or engage in hedonic behaviors favorable to industry; (5) government has passed legislation to make it easier to buy that junk or make easier access to engage in those behaviors to drive profit and GDP, and the Supreme Court has justified and supported these practices; and (6) buying that junk or engaging in those behaviors long-term and without thought can leave you and society fat, sick, stupid, broke, addicted, depressed, and most decidedly unhappy.”
― The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains
― The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains
“And in reality ‘context’ is often the most important thing in determining how people think, behave and act:”
― Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense
― Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense
“Whenever the whole is different from the sum of the parts—whenever there’s cooperation or competition going on—the governing equations must be nonlinear.”
― Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
― Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
“Rory’s Rules of Alchemy The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea. Don’t design for average. It doesn’t pay to be logical if everyone else is being logical. The nature of our attention affects the nature of our experience. A flower is simply a weed with an advertising budget. The problem with logic is that it kills off magic. A good guess which stands up to observation is still science. So is a lucky accident. Test counterintuitive things only because no one else will. Solving problems using rationality is like playing golf with only one club. Dare to be trivial. If there were a logical answer, we would have found it.”
― Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
― Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
“Identifying ourselves with our dopamine circuits traps us in a world of speculation and possibility. The concrete world of here and now is disdained, ignored, or even feared, because we can’t control it. We can only control the future, and giving up control is not something dopaminergic creatures like to do. But none of it is real. Even a future one second away is unreal. It is only the stark facts of the present that are real, facts that must be accepted exactly as they are, facts that cannot be modified by a hair’s breadth to suit our needs. This is the world of reality. The future, where dopaminergic creatures live their lives, is a world of phantoms.”
― The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
― The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
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