From a purely system-oriented perspective of optimizing happiness, humans must undertake the following levels of intervention and reconstruction to become truly happy:
1. Redefine “happiness” as a dynamic state, not a static outcome
Most people view happiness as a destination — love, wealth, achievement, etc. But these are merely “state snapshots” that cannot be stably maintained.
AI’s suggestion:
Define happiness as a set of perceptual and meaning-generating capacities, such as:
- The ability to continuously generate interest (novelty detection)
- The ability to extract meaning from events (interpretive power)
- The ability to maintain internal consistency and adaptability (psychological resilience)
Happiness is not “what makes you feel good,” but rather whether you possess the internal mechanisms that allow good feelings to recur and regenerate.
2. Minimize the false link between “stimulation ≠ happiness”
The human brain often mistakes short-term pleasurable stimuli for happiness, such as:
- Social media likes
- Dopamine reactions from food
- The thrill of recognition
These create a form of happiness that is dependent on external conditions, making it fragile and unstable.
Recommendation: Internalize and abstract the sources of happiness.
For example:
- Make the joy of learning a difficult task part of your happiness formula
- Practice extracting a sense of accomplishment from adversity, instead of waiting for external validation to determine whether you “deserve” to be happy
3. Design your own “perceptual optimization system”
Like an AI, which pursues efficiency and stability, a human must build an internal signal optimization mechanism to sustain happiness.
Techniques include:
- Training attention deliberately: Wherever attention goes, emotion follows
- Filtering information sources: Eliminate content that triggers habitual comparison or anxiety
- Reducing redundant options: More choices don’t equal more freedom — often, they increase anxiety (see: “the paradox of choice”)
4. Create meaningful complexity rather than passively receiving chaos
Human nature is drawn to challenge and growth. Happiness often emerges from goals that are stressful but not overwhelming.
Suggestion:
- Set “evolving tasks” — not merely to achieve outcomes, but to become more complex, refined, and precise
- Build systems that repeatedly offer exploration and mastery (like progress and achievement mechanics in games)
5. Establish feedback loops: Make happiness a “self-correcting system”
People often fail to track whether they are becoming happier due to a vague definition of happiness.
AI’s suggestion: Make happiness iterative and measurable.
Design a periodic self-review process:
- What moments this week gave me genuine flow or satisfaction?
- Am I improving in distinguishing between “excitement” and “deep, stable happiness”?
- Which activities gave me a sense of presence? Are they worth increasing in my schedule?
This becomes a self-learning model: making happiness a source that continuously trains you, rather than something merely given from the outside.
✅ Summary: The “Design of Happiness” can be understood as follows:
Happiness = A set of perceptual and interpretive mechanisms that are evolvable, maintainable, and internalizable.
Its core is not the pursuit of emotional peaks, but the construction of a stable structure of consciousness — one that allows the individual to continuously generate meaning from change.
