This post was a whirlwind tour of happiness research. Those who are interested can follow what I’ve been provided to learn more. It sounds like you’re not interested enough to do so, which is fine. It took me more than 15 hours to research and write this post, and not everyone has that kind of time.
But I do plan on doing more posts in the future to elaborate on some of the topics and methods I rushed over in this post. Perhaps I’ll eventually do one specifically on consumerism, so you won’t have to read the papers yourself.
Luke, if you actually read the articles you’re relying on, it shouldn’t be that hard to explain the relevant parts in this context. If you don’t have an answer, all you have to say is:
“I’m sorry—I didn’t notice the dissonance before. I’m sure there’s a way to follow expensive fashion advice without falling into the trap of consumerism, but I really only read the abstracts so I can’t quite explain how to walk the line.”
That’s it! That’s all you have to say. It’s not hard, and it avoids the need to get snappy and shift blame to others.
Okay, in brief: what the research seems to indicate is that materialistic goals (ends) may lead to unhappiness, especially if they lead to ever-growing desires for material goods (which they often do). Also, those focused on financial success tend to derive less satisfaction from other aspects of life (the Nickerson paper).
So that is why I recommend (at least) two things: Get nice clothes because it helps your social life, but also beware the threat of consumerism. Beware the pursuit of material goods for their own sake. Material goods are often of value, but don’t let them run away with you. And certainly don’t make money the focus of your efforts and passion.
But what if, e.g. you personally assign a large preference to avoiding conforming to modern fashion standards. For example, I think it is bad to vote for modern fashion with dollars because it is an unsustainable industry. I don’t have enough dollars to buy “sustainable” clothing. And I also don’t value the social opinions of others if they are based largely upon the way I dress. It would feel painful for me to take steps to be fashionable. If you told me today that my future self would adjust to being fashionable, would have no moral qualms with that, and would feel somewhat happier as a result, this would make me currently feel deeply unhappy about the person I would become.
Also, where can we find more specific instruction about how to “find a more fulfilling job”? I spend many hours thinking about this, talking to the career counselors for my grad program, writing LW posts about it, talking with campus representatives, friends, family, etc. I also scour the internet for job listing, the BLS descriptions of jobs (which are essentially the same as O*Net), etc. I feel that 2+ years of doing all this effort on an almost daily basis has not taught me a single thing about what a “fulfilling” career would be like. I truly feel like the preferences I have that I like are arranged in such a way that there are no existing modern jobs that could remotely approach the ability to make me feel fulfilled. I think rapidly increasing technology plays a drastic role in this, much like the Reeks and Wrecks from Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano.
Also, I am a healthy, well-adjusted, reasonably social person. I have good speaking skills; I frequently go out to get a drink with groups of friends; I am very active and I exercise and play on a pick-up soccer team. Yet, I am also an INTJ and I actually enjoy being alone and very introverted. I am not “fluidly” extroverted, it’s more just that it’s really simple and easy to do extroverted behaviors while still feeling introverted inside the whole time, and I like this. But I am not very agreeable (I am a bit of a contrarian and I also believe this is justified). I am compassionate to an almost dopey degree. I have no symptoms of any mental illness other than that I am chronically unhappy. The only mental illness in my family is my dad’s PTSD.
At any rate, I basically feel like the advice you give does not actually explain anything. It’s a mysterious answer to a mysterious question. How do you find a more fulfilling job if you don’t even know how to begin to know how to start learning what ‘fulfilling’ means? I think I already outwardly exhibit almost all of the happiness indicator traits that you describe and I feel very miserable almost every day.
Also, I write research papers similar to this sort of thing. 15 hours is not a long time to tabulate this kind of paper. There’s no way someone could read and truly absorb the main points in 49 research articles, and then also write this post about it, in 15 hours. So either you had already read some of the posts and the total time was more than 15 hours, or else you did not read all of the 49 references. And even if someone could read and comprehend 49 research articles that quickly, I wouldn’t want them to. The paper that they write would suffer from being surface level, and while I really appreciate the fact that you’re willing to use your own time to write this post, I think it really is very surface level.
The reason this bothers me is that now, on other LessWrong posts, everyone just refers to this post whenever someone brings up a question about happiness. People seem to act like it’s ‘solved’ and just go read lukeprog’s post; it explains everything you have to do before you can ever query for more community advice. But it doesn’t. This post is potentially helpful to people just scratching the surface of even recognizing that they want to alter their own happiness. I think it’s targeted at the wrong community. I can see how some LWers might not make any effort to be social, but most of us are already thoughtful enough that the things in the post are the first things we tried and for any post about happiness to be helpful, it needs to dig much deeper on very narrow topics (like how to actually decide which career goals to set, and then practical steps to achieve them, and what to expect once they are achieved, etc.)
I’m sorry if this seems harsh; I don’t mean to say that you don’t know what you’re talking about. You clearly do. But I would rather see one post citing 4 references on the psychology of career factors, where in 15 hours you actually could make a deeply insightful synthesis of the 4 papers and include other web resources besides the trivial O*Net, for example. All these posts with 30+ references are too diffuse to be worthwhile. Focus on fewer references, but references that offer deeper insight and can be mapped into a practical set of instructions rather than vague notions that might govern the reader’s future search criteria.
This post was a whirlwind tour of happiness research. Those who are interested can follow what I’ve been provided to learn more. It sounds like you’re not interested enough to do so, which is fine. It took me more than 15 hours to research and write this post, and not everyone has that kind of time.
But I do plan on doing more posts in the future to elaborate on some of the topics and methods I rushed over in this post. Perhaps I’ll eventually do one specifically on consumerism, so you won’t have to read the papers yourself.
Luke, if you actually read the articles you’re relying on, it shouldn’t be that hard to explain the relevant parts in this context. If you don’t have an answer, all you have to say is:
“I’m sorry—I didn’t notice the dissonance before. I’m sure there’s a way to follow expensive fashion advice without falling into the trap of consumerism, but I really only read the abstracts so I can’t quite explain how to walk the line.”
That’s it! That’s all you have to say. It’s not hard, and it avoids the need to get snappy and shift blame to others.
Okay, in brief: what the research seems to indicate is that materialistic goals (ends) may lead to unhappiness, especially if they lead to ever-growing desires for material goods (which they often do). Also, those focused on financial success tend to derive less satisfaction from other aspects of life (the Nickerson paper).
So that is why I recommend (at least) two things: Get nice clothes because it helps your social life, but also beware the threat of consumerism. Beware the pursuit of material goods for their own sake. Material goods are often of value, but don’t let them run away with you. And certainly don’t make money the focus of your efforts and passion.
But what if, e.g. you personally assign a large preference to avoiding conforming to modern fashion standards. For example, I think it is bad to vote for modern fashion with dollars because it is an unsustainable industry. I don’t have enough dollars to buy “sustainable” clothing. And I also don’t value the social opinions of others if they are based largely upon the way I dress. It would feel painful for me to take steps to be fashionable. If you told me today that my future self would adjust to being fashionable, would have no moral qualms with that, and would feel somewhat happier as a result, this would make me currently feel deeply unhappy about the person I would become.
Also, where can we find more specific instruction about how to “find a more fulfilling job”? I spend many hours thinking about this, talking to the career counselors for my grad program, writing LW posts about it, talking with campus representatives, friends, family, etc. I also scour the internet for job listing, the BLS descriptions of jobs (which are essentially the same as O*Net), etc. I feel that 2+ years of doing all this effort on an almost daily basis has not taught me a single thing about what a “fulfilling” career would be like. I truly feel like the preferences I have that I like are arranged in such a way that there are no existing modern jobs that could remotely approach the ability to make me feel fulfilled. I think rapidly increasing technology plays a drastic role in this, much like the Reeks and Wrecks from Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano.
Also, I am a healthy, well-adjusted, reasonably social person. I have good speaking skills; I frequently go out to get a drink with groups of friends; I am very active and I exercise and play on a pick-up soccer team. Yet, I am also an INTJ and I actually enjoy being alone and very introverted. I am not “fluidly” extroverted, it’s more just that it’s really simple and easy to do extroverted behaviors while still feeling introverted inside the whole time, and I like this. But I am not very agreeable (I am a bit of a contrarian and I also believe this is justified). I am compassionate to an almost dopey degree. I have no symptoms of any mental illness other than that I am chronically unhappy. The only mental illness in my family is my dad’s PTSD.
At any rate, I basically feel like the advice you give does not actually explain anything. It’s a mysterious answer to a mysterious question. How do you find a more fulfilling job if you don’t even know how to begin to know how to start learning what ‘fulfilling’ means? I think I already outwardly exhibit almost all of the happiness indicator traits that you describe and I feel very miserable almost every day.
Also, I write research papers similar to this sort of thing. 15 hours is not a long time to tabulate this kind of paper. There’s no way someone could read and truly absorb the main points in 49 research articles, and then also write this post about it, in 15 hours. So either you had already read some of the posts and the total time was more than 15 hours, or else you did not read all of the 49 references. And even if someone could read and comprehend 49 research articles that quickly, I wouldn’t want them to. The paper that they write would suffer from being surface level, and while I really appreciate the fact that you’re willing to use your own time to write this post, I think it really is very surface level.
The reason this bothers me is that now, on other LessWrong posts, everyone just refers to this post whenever someone brings up a question about happiness. People seem to act like it’s ‘solved’ and just go read lukeprog’s post; it explains everything you have to do before you can ever query for more community advice. But it doesn’t. This post is potentially helpful to people just scratching the surface of even recognizing that they want to alter their own happiness. I think it’s targeted at the wrong community. I can see how some LWers might not make any effort to be social, but most of us are already thoughtful enough that the things in the post are the first things we tried and for any post about happiness to be helpful, it needs to dig much deeper on very narrow topics (like how to actually decide which career goals to set, and then practical steps to achieve them, and what to expect once they are achieved, etc.)
I’m sorry if this seems harsh; I don’t mean to say that you don’t know what you’re talking about. You clearly do. But I would rather see one post citing 4 references on the psychology of career factors, where in 15 hours you actually could make a deeply insightful synthesis of the 4 papers and include other web resources besides the trivial O*Net, for example. All these posts with 30+ references are too diffuse to be worthwhile. Focus on fewer references, but references that offer deeper insight and can be mapped into a practical set of instructions rather than vague notions that might govern the reader’s future search criteria.