truth and happiness — Tarik Yildirim

Happiness hides inside echo chambers, meanwhile truth lies outside the boxes. Happiness is a calm stasis. Truth is an endless struggle. These two concepts are as incompatible as any two concepts can get.

It is not a coincidence that the world's greatest oppressors have oppressed in the name of truth.

We have a natural inclination to care about happiness, not truth. Structures that require us to care about truth (e.g. company boards, research institutions) are cognitively repugnant since their very functionality is based on constancy of cognitive dissonance.

Truth emerges from balance and integration across many points of view, and therefore is boring. Truth in fact should be boring. (That is why the click-bait way of doing science is so dangerous.) Hence it never goes viral. You literally need to put a fight to spread truth around. Happiness on the other hand is automatically viral because it gets amplified with further synchrony.