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28 Dec, 4 tweets, 3 min read
My favorite paper for reflecting on before the New Year asks the key question: how can we be happier?

The world's top happiness scholars ranked the best strategies for individual & societal happiness, here are results listed by feasibility & effectiveness link.springer.com/article/10.100…
Effective individual happiness strategies:
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Invest in family & friends
💃🏻Join a club
🙏Practice religion, if applicable
🤹‍♂️Be mentally & physically active
🌲Experience nature
🛌Sleep

Low effectiveness:
🧹Declutter
👨‍💻Self-employment
🍃Become vegan
🖥Eliminate screens
🏡Own a home
A related thread on money and happiness 👇 (one worthwhile caveat is that, while more money always seems to increase happiness, the happiness provided by each additional dollar is less as people get wealthier)
The effects of nature on well-being are large. A correlational study found that 120 minutes a month in nature was linked with better well-being & health. A replicated causal study found exposure to urban parks increased mental health. Summary of research: frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

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More from @emollick

Ethan Mollick Profile picture
20 Dec
On the 20th anniversary of the Lord of the Rings movies, a thread on science & Middle Earth. LOTR has been the subject of academic papers, as well as some great analyses by scientists from their disciplines. Here are some particularly great examples... 1/n theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Lets start with vulcanology: six-part tour of the geology of Lonely Mountain that explains why there is so much gold in the old volcano, among many other things. 2/n
pascals-puppy.blogspot.com/2013/12/unnatu…
While Tolkien’s volcanos hold promise, his mountain ranges were messed up. Geologist & science fiction author @katsudonburi explains the issues with Tolkien’s mountain ranges (written before plate tectonics was a known thing) 3/n tor.com/2017/08/01/tol…
Read 6 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
8 Dec
Expert critics are dead inside. People become experts in things they love, but by doing so, they lose their sense of joy: "Across seven studies... we found consistent evidence that expertise leads to emotional numbness"

Refocusing on your emotional reactions brings the joy back! Image
Basically this.
Here's the paper: academic.oup.com/jcr/article/48…. And anyone who wants to nitpick the data and methods should obviously instead refocus on the emotional highs that reading academic papers originally gave them 😜 Image
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
3 Dec
I am haunted by two papers on how much we hate hard thinking:
⚡️2/3 of men & 1/4 of women choose to shock themselves rather than sit & think for 6-15 minutes
🔥28% of people chose pain they rated as "extremely intense" for 20 seconds over spending 20 seconds solving a hard puzzle ImageImageImageImage
In general, when bored & given a chance to think, we instead just turn evil. In preregistered studies of 7,000 people, boredom is linked to sadism. 18% of bored people killed worms (2% of non-bored), and bored parents & soldiers both act more sadistically! psyarxiv.com/r67xg/ Image
It’s one reason why violent video games actually reduce crime - people are at home entertained versus out & bored.
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
1 Dec
Despite all of the speculation about how startups can now be located anywhere, Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston received 66% of all VC 💰in the US in Q3, 2021. The exact same percentage as in 2017.

Austin & Miami each had less than 2% of VC 💰 (Philly beats them both!)
Also, just to show how geographically skewed VC funding remains: Boston startups alone raised about as much money in Q3, 2021 as EVERY venture-funded startup in France and Germany put together in the same period!

I love Boston, but France and Germany have even more smaht people.
This is not to suggest that places like Miami and Austin couldn't eventually rival established tech hubs (the world would be better with more thriving hubs) but the forces that keep Silicon Valley (& Boston & NYC) on top are powerful. Here are 7 of them 👇
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
18 Nov
Knowing true information can sometimes cause harm (think of the annoyance of seeing spoilers as a tiny example). This paper on information hazards is a preview to many of the issues we face today.

So, a 🧵 on some surprising hazards of knowledge... 1/ nickbostrom.com/information-ha…
Ideological hazards: Most people have only a little knowledge about what their ideological belief (whether religious or political) really encompasses. On the web, you can learn that your chosen belief system also includes hazardous elements that you feel you need to adopt. 2/
Evocation hazards: there may be particular information that, when people encounter it, triggers them. This is not just in the common sense of triggering past trauma, but that some conspiracy theories or memes might be unusually tempting to people in particular mental states. 3/
Read 8 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
8 Nov
Who needs NFTs in video games? In-game items are already doing everything they are supposed to do. In 2017, between $3-$5 billion a year was spent buying and trading decorative weapons (& opportunities to gamble on them) in the game Counterstrike. Almost all was money laundering.
Having built games & worked with the game industry a lot, I am confused about what NFT & blockchain-based ownership adds from a game developer’s perspective. The main issue is making games that people want to play for a long time; monetizing those games is a pretty solved problem
Also, item portability seems like a bad thing from a game dev perspective. I want to sell you new digital items, I don’t want you to import stuff you earned elsewhere. Again, games have experimented with this, you don’t need the blockchain, it is a business & not technical issue.
Read 6 tweets

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