Interestingness over happiness
Tyler Cowen on Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project:
People should strive to be more interesting and more responsible. Happiness may result as a byproduct, but those are more important values. I would like to read a book called The Interesting Project.
Cowen also believes in the “set point” theory of happiness, which I first remember being taken by in The Paradox of Choice regarding reference points for happiness in accident victims versus lottery winners.
Then, of course, there is the dissenting opinion: “I don’t want to be interesting, I want to be good.”—Mies van der Rohe
