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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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In far mode we should feel more distant from folks around us. So since happy is far, happy folks should feel more lonely. And they do:
The more people value happiness, the lonelier they feel on a daily basis (assessed over 2 weeks with diaries). … An experimental manipulation of valuing happiness … demonstrates that inducing people to value happiness leads to relatively greater loneliness, as measured by self-reports and a hormonal index (progesterone). In each study, key potential confounds, such as positive and negative affect, were ruled out. (more)
Happy Is Lonely
@ Robin Hanson
In your Is Happy Far? post you concluded:
So it seems being happy makes you think far, and thinking far makes you happy, and better able to see what makes you happy. This conflicts with blue’s concept associations with unhappiness, and weakens support for blue-is-far. Color me confused. Loneliness, being the condition of being alone and wanting otherwise, is inherently vastly less subjective than happiness. Put another way, loneliness is the same for anyone who is lonely, but happiness is different for many different people. For some it may be far whereas for others is may be near and for others still it may be both depending on what kind of happiness they're measuring. Whether a person considers themselves happy will necessarily depend on what they mean by happiness.
The upshot being that you must define happiness more narrowly before you can validly asset that happy is lonely, or before you can resolve the paradox you pointed to in Is Happy Far?.
"Happiness is lonely" is actually the reason I created http://www.DailyHap.com, a website that encourages the pursuit of happiness within a community of happy people, because happiness IS sometimes lonely. Particularly the pursuit of happiness, which is so hard to quantify and thus harder to feel like you've achieved.