The Importance of Happiness

Dhruv is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. He has interests in psychology, philosophy and animal advocacy.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠here on YouTube⁠.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

01:33 Dhruv Intro

02:25 What's Real?

- Born in India, moving to Scotland "A mix of two cultures"

- Hindu temple at home, outside was "classic western materialism, science..."

- @OfficialDerrenBrown 's "Tricks of the Mind". Magic, charlatanism, #homeopathy , #religion, #GMO scepticism (e.g. Golden Rice)

- Reading Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things" at 12 yrs old

- Finding school academically easy but socially hard "immigrant children willl know... feeling like half and half and the halves don't really mix"

- Culturally universal values: "There was this value of transcendence that was just missing... it would be really nice if god was real... I switched back and forth"

- Celebrating #diwali when visiting India "I could see the appeal... but I couldn't see any reason or logic"

- "It's not like the western materialists have any really great answers on how to live..."

- Experiencing clinical #depression at Cambridge University

- Discovering #stoicism & #nietzsche "a very positive nihilism"

- The @philosophizethispodcast and @theschooloflifetv "self-directed, exploratory learning"

- Existentialism "I couldn't really follow the continental philosophers". Camus' "The Plague" made more sense during #covid19

- A personal situation "which just did not seem amenable to being logiced out of"

- A talk by @akalamusic

- Going back to Indian religion & philosophy "there might be something here"

- Reading the #mahabharata to understand the context for the #bhagavadgita

- #arjuna , #krishna roles & responsibilities "why should I act if the fruits of my acts are not my own?"

- Encountering #buddhism Graham Priest's "Paraconsistent logics" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Priest

- 2 weeks at a Buddhist monastery in Scotland "everyone had their own story... so much suffering... worse than mine"

- Values of patience, generosity, loving

- Practising #meditation & #mindfulness

- "Let me just try things that seem to work"

- The wisdom of hunter-gatherer cultures

- Not dismissing or reifying any culture

- "I accidentally moved to New Zealand"

- Going #vegan (after growing up #vegetarian ) mainly for environmental reasons

- Trying vegan pizza "this is fine"

- @SimonAmstellNumb 's #Carnage documentary https://youtu.be/6dXG0_yr7HE

- @ed.winters Watching #EarthlingEd

- Ethical & epistemological journeys developing in parallel

- Meeting an activist community

- Reading Peter Singer's "The Life You Can Save" and #effectivealtruism

- Sam Harris' "Waking Up"

- Identity & Derek Parfit

- Physicist Carlo Rovelli's "The Order of Time" & intepretations of quantum physics

- "I have 4 extremely diverse points of view pointing to this very strange thing about notions of identity... the Buddha takes things one step further... his is one of the reasons you're upset"

- "Being troubled by open metaphysical questions is not because you don't have an answer... it's because you expect the answer"

- A local #yoga group

- "I stopped being bothered by these big existential questions"

- Exploring from the outside & the inside (e.g. via meditation)

- Cravings & suffering

Also what matters, who matters, how we can make a better future...

...and much more. Full show notes at ⁠Sentientism.info⁠.

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