That sounds so obviously like it that I’d expect anybody making that argument to have noticed, rational or not. Who is so blind to the dangers of correlation vs causation that they wouldn’t suspect that doing well makes people happy? (Among those intelligent enough to have anything worthwhile to say about genetic engineering.)
Part of the problem is that is may be true. I give it about a 50% chance of being true—on the grounds that we are not adapted to our modern environment, and chances are that innate happiness levels are one of the ways. Also, self-improvement gurus tell us to fake happiness and smiling—so we generate self-fulfilling prophesies. It isn’t that implausible that more genetic happiness might actually be good for us.
On the other hand, our ancestors were mostly miserable. We are happier than they—so assuming that nature tuned their happiness levels “correctly”—modern man’s happiness may need taking down a notch.
On the other hand, our ancestors were mostly miserable.
Our ancestors mostly lived in conditions that you and I would find miserable. What is the evidence that they were mostly miserable? I thought the opposite, but I don’t know real facts.
I am not sure I can summarise briefly. That the link between GDP per capita and self-reported happiness is positive and strong is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence for me:
That the link between GDP per capita and self-reported happiness is positive and strong is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence for me
Quick correction: that’s satisfaction. One of the odd things about mood research is that satisfaction and happiness are distinct things measured distinctly- essentially, happiness is near mode and satisfaction is far mode. When you ask questions like “how many times did you smile in the last week?” which measures near mode happiness, you generally get no correlation between happiness and income in one country*, and a negative correlation between countries (i.e. Nigerians are happier than Americans). When you ask people how satisfied they are with their lives (sorry, but I don’t remember an example off hand), then you get a pretty strong relationship between log(income) and satisfaction, both within countries and between countries.
* Research in America shows happiness increases up until a pretty low income, then a flatline.
The second link, again, is conditions that we would find miserable, but some people like to fight.
But thanks for the first link. This indeed “flies against everything we thought we knew ten years ago”, or at least everything that I thought I knew, so apparently my understanding (that happiness has more to do with one’s relative status within society than anything absolute) is ten years out of date.
However, most of this (all but one paragraph of the second link) is still comparing within civilised societies, whereas
assuming that nature tuned their happiness levels “correctly”
would be for uncivilised people. So what I’d really like to see is a debunking of the “original affluent society”-like claim that hunter-gatherers have happy lives. (I know that Sahlins’s research doesn’t really hold up, but that just brings me back to simply not knowing the relative happiness levels.)
That sounds so obviously like it that I’d expect anybody making that argument to have noticed, rational or not. Who is so blind to the dangers of correlation vs causation that they wouldn’t suspect that doing well makes people happy? (Among those intelligent enough to have anything worthwhile to say about genetic engineering.)
Part of the problem is that is may be true. I give it about a 50% chance of being true—on the grounds that we are not adapted to our modern environment, and chances are that innate happiness levels are one of the ways. Also, self-improvement gurus tell us to fake happiness and smiling—so we generate self-fulfilling prophesies. It isn’t that implausible that more genetic happiness might actually be good for us.
On the other hand, our ancestors were mostly miserable. We are happier than they—so assuming that nature tuned their happiness levels “correctly”—modern man’s happiness may need taking down a notch.
Our ancestors mostly lived in conditions that you and I would find miserable. What is the evidence that they were mostly miserable? I thought the opposite, but I don’t know real facts.
I am not sure I can summarise briefly. That the link between GDP per capita and self-reported happiness is positive and strong is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence for me:
http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/09/09/standing-up-for-gdp/
Another factor is that life was violent and short—which was probably not much fun:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html
Quick correction: that’s satisfaction. One of the odd things about mood research is that satisfaction and happiness are distinct things measured distinctly- essentially, happiness is near mode and satisfaction is far mode. When you ask questions like “how many times did you smile in the last week?” which measures near mode happiness, you generally get no correlation between happiness and income in one country*, and a negative correlation between countries (i.e. Nigerians are happier than Americans). When you ask people how satisfied they are with their lives (sorry, but I don’t remember an example off hand), then you get a pretty strong relationship between log(income) and satisfaction, both within countries and between countries.
* Research in America shows happiness increases up until a pretty low income, then a flatline.
The second link, again, is conditions that we would find miserable, but some people like to fight.
But thanks for the first link. This indeed “flies against everything we thought we knew ten years ago”, or at least everything that I thought I knew, so apparently my understanding (that happiness has more to do with one’s relative status within society than anything absolute) is ten years out of date.
However, most of this (all but one paragraph of the second link) is still comparing within civilised societies, whereas
would be for uncivilised people. So what I’d really like to see is a debunking of the “original affluent society”-like claim that hunter-gatherers have happy lives. (I know that Sahlins’s research doesn’t really hold up, but that just brings me back to simply not knowing the relative happiness levels.)