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Why do we feel like in order to be productive, happy, or good, we must sacrifice everything else? Is it possible to feel all three at once? Without even knowing it, we\\u2019re doing things everyday to sabotage ourselves and our societies, habits that prevent us from optimizing long term happiness. Where most books imagine solutions that, when enacted, fail to fundamentally improve our lives, Jim Davies grounds his research in cognitive science to show you not only what works, but how much it works. Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are shows us how we can use science to become our best selves, using resources we already have within our own brains.

Shermer and Davies discuss: \\u2022 an operational definition of the \\u201cgood life\\u201d or \\u201chappiness\\u201d or \\u201cwell being\\u201d \\u2022 utilitarianism vs. deontology vs. virtue ethics \\u2022\\xa0effective altruism \\u2022 marriage and children \\u2022 objective moral values \\u2022\\xa0Do we have a moral obligation to help those who cannot help themselves? \\u2022 Does America have a moral obligation to help oppressed peoples in dictatorships? \\u2022 immigration \\u2022 abortion \\u2022 the welfare state \\u2022 prostitution \\u2022 reparations.

Jim Davies is a full professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University and the School of Computer Science. He is the director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory and he co-hosts, along with Dr. Kim Hellemans, the podcast Minding the Brain. He is the author of Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe; Imagination: The Science of Your Mind\\u2019s Greatest Power, and his new book Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.