Also: why do we habituate to life’s greatest pleasures?
I've seen more dogs dance the flamenco than I've seen children voluntarily give a piece of their birthday cake.
Hey, I'm Angela Duckworth.
I'm Steven Dubner, and you're listening to.
No stupid questions today on the show.
Is it possible to be self interested and altruistic at the same time?
What if I want to be a drug dealer?
What if I want to be a politician?
That plainly has no good effect on anyone.
Also, why do we become desensitized to the most wonderful things about life?
Can you imagine how blissed out I would be if every time I flushed a toilet, I thanked my lucky stars?
Like, what kind of planet is this?
This is amazing.
Steven, I have a question for you.
Sure.
In your experience, would you say that ambitious and successful people are also selfish?
So, as with every question and answer in the world, it's highly context dependent.
I mean, ambition and success in service of what?
Ambitious in the service of promoting themselves as the best blank in the world or ambitious in the service of something that's going to be a social or a public good?
So my knee jerk is I really want ambitious and successful people to be selfish, because I want them to succeed.
If they're working on something that one cares about, I want them to do what they feel is most in their interest to get to their goal.