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My Recent Posts · (06/18/09

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Daniel Gilbert has an interesting article up on NYT about why unhappiness may be on the rise.

I love this guy's research (I've written about it before a few times). It's amazing to see how bad we are at predicting what will or won't make us happy, and how long things will affect us.

But I always wonder about the construct validity of these studies. Are they really measuring what we mean by 'happiness'?

If you had the resources at your disposal, how would YOU scientifically study something like happiness, or 'a flourishing life', or contentment, or fulfillment, or whatever?

My Recent Posts · (06/18/09

I don't understand, what don't we know that we used to know? What are we uncertain about?

Happiness is loving your life, IMO.

I think it's most likely to occur in the absence of some things and the presence of others. It occurs when the absence of stress, hatred, sadness and discomfort, is combined with the presence of something to look forward to, adequate socialization, love and stimulation. This state, IMO, contains all the different components of happiness I can think of right now: contentment, peace, fulfillment, belonging, bonding, etc.

One interesting way to test someone's happiness is suggesting the idea of eternal recurrence to them. It's not without its flaws, but on this forum we've already had a couple interesting discussions about it. I think someone who wanted to relive their life could be defined as happy.

I'm not sure how I would design a study, though. I guess what anybody does; construct a long questionnaire of arbitrary questions, including permutations of the above one, give it a neat acronym and pretend the result is a meaningful number.

My Recent Posts · (06/28/09

"You do not suffer because things are impermanent. You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent." - Thich Nhat Hanh

My Recent Posts · (06/28/09

I'm not so sure. I'm reasonably well-versed in Buddhist philosophy, and fairly aware of the reality of impermanence. I am becoming more and more skeptical of the value of Buddhist philosophy over time. It is essentially "salvationist" thinking - offering the promise of being "saved" from suffering in life. In this sense, it is not much different than Christianity or Islam. All of these "salvationist" schools of thought seem hard-pressed to deliver the promised results where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. People still suffer for all sorts of reasons.

I've never found that philosophical insights do much in the face of really serious problems. Maybe they do for some, but not for me. If anyone is benefiting in real-world terms from Buddhism, I think it has more to do with faith and practice than with philosophical insight - just like Christianity and Islam. The truth of impermanence is interesting and important, but it doesn't do much for me.

My Recent Posts · (06/29/09

Yeah, I hear what you are saying. It's one of those "if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle" kind of things. However, I really think if I could truly see each stage of my life as impermanent and couple that with real acceptance of that fact I might be able to shrug off at least the existential and emotional pain caused by impermanence. A stubbed toe would still hurt though.

My Recent Posts · (06/29/09

My Recent Posts · (06/29/09

Thoughts -- even irrational ones -- can have real consequences, often undoubtably positive.

For example, I won't think away the pain of a stubbed toe or gastroenteritis, but when going through it, if I remind myself that this is temporary pain and won't have permanent consequences, it really does make it easier for me to bear. In other words, it makes me feel relatively better (less badly than otherwise).

The same principle applied large certainly might apply. We won't get rid of all our suffering (probably for the best), but reminding ourselves of the big picture might make a lot of things (not everything!) less painful.

But obviously trying to pitch this like it's a cure-all feels lame. Telling someone starving or dying of cancer that it's impermanent probably won't help much, unless their overall worldview is already such that they see their own life as not mattering in the big picture or something.

But even if that worldview is right -- that an individual human life doesn't matter much to the big picture of life's evolution in the universe -- it may be better not to hold onto that worldview.

If you believe in progress, we could say that more progress might be made by holding inaccurate or 'irrational' beliefs. If you believe in utilitarianism, we could say that more utility might be expected in a world where people hold inaccurate or 'irrational' beliefs. By a lot of measures, veridicality of our beliefs may lead to a worse outcome on that particular measure. Or, put in reverse, if we find that accurate beliefs lead to depression (which isn't obvious from their correlate, but let's assume it), is depression worth accuracy (even if that combined accuracy and depression is less functional, does not help you navigate the world better, etc.)?

Is knowing how the world works worth something on its own, or because it lets us interact with the world in some better way? From an evolutionary standpoint, no doubt a lot of our reasoning abilities (like counter-factuals) came about to help us more accurately represent/model the world in order to survive better. But now that we're here, and we find that some of these reasoning capacities overshot their function and now may be maladaptive, where does that leave us?

My Recent Posts · (06/29/09

Loops,

But even if that worldview is right -- that an individual human life doesn't matter much to the big picture of life's evolution in the universe -- it may be better not to hold onto that worldview.

My worldview is that the whole planet earth doesn't matter much. If earth were sucked in by a black hole today, who would miss us?

My Recent Posts · (07/03/09

If you had the resources at your disposal, how would YOU scientifically study something like happiness, or 'a flourishing life', or contentment, or fulfillment, or whatever?

I don't think it can be nailed down that way, or at least any such attempt will end up arbitrary, and there'll probably be unhappy people who manage to fall into the happy category and vice versa.

I think happiness is probably best measured the same way we do pain in hospitals. Roughly, we just say "Rate your pain from 1 to 10."

So rate your happiness from 1 to 10. Mine generally hovers between 4 and 6, which I find quite comfortable. I distrust higher levels, and try to avoid lower levels. And uncertainty makes me unhappy when it's the "am I going to lose my job?" or "am I going to get kicked out of my apartment?" variety. Although it's better than "I'm certainly going to lose my job" or "I'm certainly going to lose my apartment."

My Recent Posts · (07/03/09

MK said: And uncertainty makes me unhappy when it's the "am I going to lose my job?" or "am I going to get kicked out of my apartment?" variety. Although it's better than "I'm certainly going to lose my job" or "I'm certainly going to lose my apartment."

But if that uncertainty lasts for quite a while, versus being kicked out of your apartment/job and forced to move on to a new circumstance, are you sure you'll be happier with the uncertainty? Surely you can imagine plausible situations where the feeling of uncertainty pushes your happiness pretty low, and it hangs low for quite a while, whereas a certain-but-bad situation dips your happiness significantly for a brief period, but then lets you get back to a more steady, overall-better-than-uncertainty baseline.

One things that researchers looking at happiness have definitely found, based on self-report measures just like you suggest, is that we suck at predicting how happy or unhappy things will make us over time. We may feel like actually getting kicked out of the apartment is worse than worrying about the possibility of it, but it seems like in many circumstances, that is not necessarily the case.

My Recent Posts · (07/03/09

Happiness is one of those things forever sought, but never realized until it has once again been lost.

My Recent Posts · (07/31/09

Abominable Juggernaut wrote:
However, I really think if I could truly see each stage of my life as impermanent and couple that with real acceptance of that fact I might be able to shrug off at least the existential and emotional pain caused by impermanence.

Naturyl wrote:
I think it has more to do with faith and practice than with philosophical insight - just like Christianity and Islam.

I think that both points apply. We need to accept impermanence, and engaging in some sort of practice can help to develop that acceptance. And we need to have a certain amount of faith that engaging in that practice --- whatever it may happen to be --- is going to be worthwhile.

My Recent Posts · (07/31/09

Impermanence implies loss. Loss is therefore unavoidable.

There is one kind of loss, however, which we can always welcome: the loss of attachment to whatever we have lost or will lose.

My Recent Posts · (07/31/09

As a warmup towards our acceptance of impermanence in general, we can consider in particular the impermanence of pixel patterns.

From that, we can graduate to a consideration of the impermanence of message boards.

Author	Comment
Strange Loops	Unhappiness from outcome, or from uncertainty?	Lead	[-]
Posts: 122 (06/18/09 12:23:12) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Tags : None Daniel Gilbert has an interesting article up on NYT about why unhappiness may be on the rise. I love this guy's research (I've written about it before a few times). It's amazing to see how bad we are at predicting what will or won't make us happy, and how long things will affect us. But I always wonder about the construct validity of these studies. Are they really measuring what we mean by 'happiness'? If you had the resources at your disposal, how would YOU scientifically study something like happiness, or 'a flourishing life', or contentment, or fulfillment, or whatever? "Nothing can hold you back - not your childhood, not the history of a lifetime, not even the very last moment before now. In a moment you can abandon your past. And once abandoned, you can redefine it. If the past was a ring of futility, let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward. If the past was a brick wall, let it become a dam to unleash your power. The very first step of change is so powerful, the boundaries of time fall aside. In one bittersweet moment, the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged." --Tzvi Freeman Visit www.strange-loops.com/blog/ for science, philosophy, politics and naked pictures of your mom.
Quite Real Bumpbert		#1	[-]
Posts: 106 (06/18/09 13:03:48) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I don't understand, what don't we know that we used to know? What are we uncertain about? Happiness is loving your life, IMO. I think it's most likely to occur in the absence of some things and the presence of others. It occurs when the absence of stress, hatred, sadness and discomfort, is combined with the presence of something to look forward to, adequate socialization, love and stimulation. This state, IMO, contains all the different components of happiness I can think of right now: contentment, peace, fulfillment, belonging, bonding, etc. One interesting way to test someone's happiness is suggesting the idea of eternal recurrence to them. It's not without its flaws, but on this forum we've already had a couple interesting discussions about it. I think someone who wanted to relive their life could be defined as happy. I'm not sure how I would design a study, though. I guess what anybody does; construct a long questionnaire of arbitrary questions, including permutations of the above one, give it a neat acronym and pretend the result is a meaningful number.
Abominable Juggernaut		#2	[-]
Posts: 742 (06/28/09 10:56:46) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	"You do not suffer because things are impermanent. You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent." - Thich Nhat Hanh Quote: "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire Links: Lifehacker.com \| Stronglifts.com \| The Simple Dollar \| TED \| Slick Deals \| The Straight Dope \| Dark Roasted Blend \| Forums: The Star Chamber \| KIR \| Usual Suspects \| GENIUS FORUMS \|
Naturyl		#3	[-]
Posts: 11823 (06/28/09 18:30:28) Ozymandias Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I'm not so sure. I'm reasonably well-versed in Buddhist philosophy, and fairly aware of the reality of impermanence. I am becoming more and more skeptical of the value of Buddhist philosophy over time. It is essentially "salvationist" thinking - offering the promise of being "saved" from suffering in life. In this sense, it is not much different than Christianity or Islam. All of these "salvationist" schools of thought seem hard-pressed to deliver the promised results where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. People still suffer for all sorts of reasons. I've never found that philosophical insights do much in the face of really serious problems. Maybe they do for some, but not for me. If anyone is benefiting in real-world terms from Buddhism, I think it has more to do with faith and practice than with philosophical insight - just like Christianity and Islam. The truth of impermanence is interesting and important, but it doesn't do much for me. "I'm the wrong motherf__r to diss, because I allowed God to let you motherf__rs exist." Last Edited By: Naturyl 06/28/09 18:33:30. Edited 1 times.
Abominable Juggernaut		#4	[-]
Posts: 742 (06/29/09 10:25:21) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Yeah, I hear what you are saying. It's one of those "if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle" kind of things. However, I really think if I could truly see each stage of my life as impermanent and couple that with real acceptance of that fact I might be able to shrug off at least the existential and emotional pain caused by impermanence. A stubbed toe would still hurt though. Quote: "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire Links: Lifehacker.com \| Stronglifts.com \| The Simple Dollar \| TED \| Slick Deals \| The Straight Dope \| Dark Roasted Blend \| Forums: The Star Chamber \| KIR \| Usual Suspects \| GENIUS FORUMS \|
Abominable Juggernaut		#5	[-]
Posts: 742 (06/29/09 10:39:20) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Quote: "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire Links: Lifehacker.com \| Stronglifts.com \| The Simple Dollar \| TED \| Slick Deals \| The Straight Dope \| Dark Roasted Blend \| Forums: The Star Chamber \| KIR \| Usual Suspects \| GENIUS FORUMS \|
Strange Loops		#6	[-]
Posts: 122 (06/29/09 10:41:57) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Thoughts -- even irrational ones -- can have real consequences, often undoubtably positive. For example, I won't think away the pain of a stubbed toe or gastroenteritis, but when going through it, if I remind myself that this is temporary pain and won't have permanent consequences, it really does make it easier for me to bear. In other words, it makes me feel relatively better (less badly than otherwise). The same principle applied large certainly might apply. We won't get rid of all our suffering (probably for the best), but reminding ourselves of the big picture might make a lot of things (not everything!) less painful. But obviously trying to pitch this like it's a cure-all feels lame. Telling someone starving or dying of cancer that it's impermanent probably won't help much, unless their overall worldview is already such that they see their own life as not mattering in the big picture or something. But even if that worldview is right -- that an individual human life doesn't matter much to the big picture of life's evolution in the universe -- it may be better not to hold onto that worldview. If you believe in progress, we could say that more progress might be made by holding inaccurate or 'irrational' beliefs. If you believe in utilitarianism, we could say that more utility might be expected in a world where people hold inaccurate or 'irrational' beliefs. By a lot of measures, veridicality of our beliefs may lead to a worse outcome on that particular measure. Or, put in reverse, if we find that accurate beliefs lead to depression (which isn't obvious from their correlate, but let's assume it), is depression worth accuracy (even if that combined accuracy and depression is less functional, does not help you navigate the world better, etc.)? Is knowing how the world works worth something on its own, or because it lets us interact with the world in some better way? From an evolutionary standpoint, no doubt a lot of our reasoning abilities (like counter-factuals) came about to help us more accurately represent/model the world in order to survive better. But now that we're here, and we find that some of these reasoning capacities overshot their function and now may be maladaptive, where does that leave us? "Nothing can hold you back - not your childhood, not the history of a lifetime, not even the very last moment before now. In a moment you can abandon your past. And once abandoned, you can redefine it. If the past was a ring of futility, let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward. If the past was a brick wall, let it become a dam to unleash your power. The very first step of change is so powerful, the boundaries of time fall aside. In one bittersweet moment, the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged." --Tzvi Freeman Visit www.strange-loops.com/blog/ for science, philosophy, politics and naked pictures of your mom.
Sherezada		#7	[-]
Posts: 2407 (06/29/09 11:57:09) Persian princess Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Loops, But even if that worldview is right -- that an individual human life doesn't matter much to the big picture of life's evolution in the universe -- it may be better not to hold onto that worldview. My worldview is that the whole planet earth doesn't matter much. If earth were sucked in by a black hole today, who would miss us? There are 10 kinds of people: those who can do binary arithmetic, and those that can't.
MKULTRA ver II		#8	[-]
Posts: 164 (07/03/09 11:01:22) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	If you had the resources at your disposal, how would YOU scientifically study something like happiness, or 'a flourishing life', or contentment, or fulfillment, or whatever? I don't think it can be nailed down that way, or at least any such attempt will end up arbitrary, and there'll probably be unhappy people who manage to fall into the happy category and vice versa. I think happiness is probably best measured the same way we do pain in hospitals. Roughly, we just say "Rate your pain from 1 to 10." So rate your happiness from 1 to 10. Mine generally hovers between 4 and 6, which I find quite comfortable. I distrust higher levels, and try to avoid lower levels. And uncertainty makes me unhappy when it's the "am I going to lose my job?" or "am I going to get kicked out of my apartment?" variety. Although it's better than "I'm certainly going to lose my job" or "I'm certainly going to lose my apartment."
Strange Loops		#9	[-]
Posts: 122 (07/03/09 11:32:07) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	MK said: And uncertainty makes me unhappy when it's the "am I going to lose my job?" or "am I going to get kicked out of my apartment?" variety. Although it's better than "I'm certainly going to lose my job" or "I'm certainly going to lose my apartment." But if that uncertainty lasts for quite a while, versus being kicked out of your apartment/job and forced to move on to a new circumstance, are you sure you'll be happier with the uncertainty? Surely you can imagine plausible situations where the feeling of uncertainty pushes your happiness pretty low, and it hangs low for quite a while, whereas a certain-but-bad situation dips your happiness significantly for a brief period, but then lets you get back to a more steady, overall-better-than-uncertainty baseline. One things that researchers looking at happiness have definitely found, based on self-report measures just like you suggest, is that we suck at predicting how happy or unhappy things will make us over time. We may feel like actually getting kicked out of the apartment is worse than worrying about the possibility of it, but it seems like in many circumstances, that is not necessarily the case. "Nothing can hold you back - not your childhood, not the history of a lifetime, not even the very last moment before now. In a moment you can abandon your past. And once abandoned, you can redefine it. If the past was a ring of futility, let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward. If the past was a brick wall, let it become a dam to unleash your power. The very first step of change is so powerful, the boundaries of time fall aside. In one bittersweet moment, the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged." --Tzvi Freeman Visit www.strange-loops.com/blog/ for science, philosophy, politics and naked pictures of your mom.
hmcclungiii		#10	[-]
Posts: 400 (07/03/09 22:25:54) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Happiness is one of those things forever sought, but never realized until it has once again been lost.
Ducky M		#11	[-]
Posts: 3688 (07/31/09 18:54:45) MasterIHMPPPä(click here) Manipulator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Abominable Juggernaut wrote: However, I really think if I could truly see each stage of my life as impermanent and couple that with real acceptance of that fact I might be able to shrug off at least the existential and emotional pain caused by impermanence. Naturyl wrote: I think it has more to do with faith and practice than with philosophical insight - just like Christianity and Islam. I think that both points apply. We need to accept impermanence, and engaging in some sort of practice can help to develop that acceptance. And we need to have a certain amount of faith that engaging in that practice --- whatever it may happen to be --- is going to be worthwhile.
Ducky M		#12	[-]
Posts: 3688 (07/31/09 22:00:15) MasterIHMPPPä(click here) Manipulator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Impermanence implies loss. Loss is therefore unavoidable. There is one kind of loss, however, which we can always welcome: the loss of attachment to whatever we have lost or will lose.
Ducky M		#13	[-]
Posts: 3688 (07/31/09 22:04:07) MasterIHMPPPä(click here) Manipulator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	As a warmup towards our acceptance of impermanence in general, we can consider in particular the impermanence of pixel patterns. From that, we can graduate to a consideration of the impermanence of message boards. Last Edited By: Ducky M 07/31/09 22:07:19. Edited 1 times.

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Unhappiness from outcome, or from uncertainty?

Unhappiness from outcome, or from uncertainty?

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