Happiness research shows that money is good up to a certain point and then it stops making things any better in terms of your happiness. So you need to have a certain minimum amount to have security. I recently got kind of a largest inheritance and it's been really interesting to watch how it has changed, affected my thinking and my life because I didn't used to have that. Now I do.
It’s become fashionable to argue that free will is a fiction: that we humans are in the thrall of animal urges and unconscious biases and only think that we are choosing freely. In Freely Determined, research psychologist Kennon Sheldon argues that this perception is not only wrong but also dangerous.
Shermer and Sheldon discuss: definitions of free will, determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will • dualism • reductionism, materialism, predetermination, and epiphenomenalism • Christian List’s three capacities for free will • AI, Star Trek’s Data, sentience and consciousness, ChatGPT, GPT-4 • how what people believe about free will and determinism influences their behaviors • the case for hard determinism • brain injuries, tumors, addictions, and other “determiners” of behavior • emergence • symbolic self • System 1 vs. System 2 thinking • Experiencing Self vs. Remembered Self • subjective well-being and happiness.
Kennon M. Sheldon is professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. He is one of the founding researchers of positive psychology, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a recipient of the Templeton Foundation Positive Psychology Prize. He lives in Columbia, Missouri. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and scholarly books, including Stability of Happiness: Theories and Evidence on Whether Happiness Can Change; Designing the Future of Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward; Current Directions in Psychological Science; and Self-Determination Theory in the Clinic. His new book integrates all this research into a popular trade book Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live.