Firstly, pg isn’t addressing the overall question of living a good life, he’s addressing how to start a startup that doesn’t fail. Which may or may not be a good life decision even by pg’s standards.
Secondly, a lot of people have conflicting desires and actually want one of those desires to win out. For instance, some people want to be in good shape, but they also want to lay around on the couch all day reading novels or watching TV or playing video games. If you do that every day for a few months, you will not be in good shape. You want to be in good shape but you don’t want to go to the gym, so you are unhappy. The solution may very well be to trick yourself into doing things you don’t want to do, by making yourself want to do them, because you want to reap the benefits of having done the thing.
And yeah, people are motivated more by fear than by hope. It sucks but it’s true. Our evolutionary environment led us to prioritize not losing things like social status or safety over trying to attain our wildest dreams, because most of the mammals before us who ignored risks to their safety and social status didn’t reproduce.
Secondly, a lot of people have conflicting desires and actually want one of those desires to win out. For instance, some people want to be in good shape, but they also want to lay around on the couch all day reading novels or watching TV or playing video games. If you do that every day for a few months, you will not be in good shape. You want to be in good shape but you don’t want to go to the gym, so you are unhappy. The solution may very well be to trick yourself into doing things you don’t want to do, by making yourself want to do them, because you want to reap the benefits of having done the thing.
And yeah, people are motivated more by fear than by hope. It sucks but it’s true. Our evolutionary environment led us to prioritize not losing things like social status or safety over trying to attain our wildest dreams, because most of the mammals before us who ignored risks to their safety and social status didn’t reproduce.