The science of happiness.

I was just guessing/at numbers and figures,
pulling your puzzles apart,
Questions of science/science and progress,
do not speak as loud as my heart.-Coldplay

The above lyrics are from one of my favorite songs of all time. It's called "The Scientist" by Coldplay. The song has a lot of meanings to it, I think it was intentionally written to refer to the end of a relationship, but I like using the song to describe the way I think in general. There's always those people who use science, logic, facts, and data to explain everything. I'm not one of those people. Sometimes I believe there are some things that just go beyond science. Not everything can be explained. Not everything can be *fixed*.

In Nick Bostrom's TED Talk, he talks about the "problem" of death. He starts laying out statistics about how the one of highest causes of death is natural causes. He asks how do we prevent this? This is the part where I go...

Huh?

Prevent death? Wipe out suffering? Wouldn't that make us...not human?

Nick Bostrom I know is not the only one out there who are coming up with biological solutions to our natural human suffering. Drugs like anti-depressants...trust me I know that there are people who most definitely benefit from them. At the same time, I also know that anti-depressants are over-prescibed, and that people are looking to these pills as solutions to their sadness. Everyone gets sad. Everyone has problems. But there is a difference between people who actually are depressed, and those who have a difficult time handling a hard phase of life. They use these pills to make them happy, but that's not the way anti-depressants work.

All the other biological "solutions" that were listed on the handout, these are just band-aids. They cover up a problem. They can't possibly bring anyone happiness. Or at least the kind of genuine happiness we all desire.