You can’t be happier than the person you’re with. I’ve tried. It doesn’t go over well. Scott Adams Why did evolution makes us (sometimes) happy? One standard story, and in fact the only story I’ve found so far in a quick search, is that happiness is just our mind’s way of telling us what we want. We consciously want to be happy, and so to direct our behavior our subconscious tells us that we are happy doing what it wants us to do.
Response to Bryan Caplan's argument that happiness from "following one's dreams" is counterposed to affiliative gratifications from family and community:
Following one's dreams = Forging new associations that are more congenial and in which one enjoys higher status.
[The schoolboy's fantasy of following one's dreams is becoming a professional athlete. But always team sports!
[The primal human archetype of "following" might derive from our nomadic heritage. You follow your band--or (perhaps) you and some others split.]
Robin is very good on association. Being and extravert (where most social theorists are introverts) he has a comparative advantage in understanding association.
I use Robin's insight into happiness as an affiliation signal in "Consciousness, communication, and the pursuit of happiness" ( http://juridicalcoherence.b... )
You can’t be happier than the person you’re with. I’ve tried. It doesn’t go over well. - Scott Adams
This I don't get. I think the first sentence is true (hyperbolically). But it isn't because being happy doesn't go over well. This would actually contradict your insight; but reality tells us that unhappy folks like to be around those who "cheer them up" (which fits). (There are exceptions: it isn't polite to be happy over another's misfortunes or to show no empathy. Thus it is sometimes said that "misery loves company," but that's when schadenfreude allows a sense of enhanced status.)
Groups of people may feel happier when they reach a consensus but that still means that individuals enjoy the feeling of consensus itself. There has to be someone at home, how else would the individuals of the group know the group is happier?
I'm just saying that maybe the locus of agency isn't the individual. Whereafter you can put it anywhere... Such as on the signal. The signal must be obeyed. Those who obey are the happy ones. The unhappy ones are those who try to staunch their obedience.
why happiness doesn’t encode our value for status and social approval, as it encodes so many other values
First about the cases of being born earlier and women's rights. This was a bad example because the explicit answer to the question is largely determined by the social desirability of the opinion rather than by the respondent's real proclivities. If folks answered the question honestly, they would choose what made them happiest. It is only when you are asked to make specific choices not couched in the language of happiness that the bias for wants usually shows up.
But you've already (implicitly) answered the question about why happiness doesn't encode our value of status (and of "social approval" in the sense of status-seeking as opposed to affiliation seeking). It was adaptive for humans to signal their satisfaction with the group, so the group can be confident of their loyalty. It would not typically be adaptive to signal your self-satisfaction regarding your status/power. This state is often best kept to oneself.
There's an ambiguity in "in order to." I don't think Robin is prepared to commit himself on its precise application, which is why you sense confusion.
What you paint is the most extreme interpretation: our actual motivations are (whether consciously or subconsciously) motives to engage in signaling.
The less radical interpretation is that that they are historically derived from signaling and bear the earmarks of their origin but aren't necessarily motives to signal. For example, even at an unconscious level, we may be trying to avoid guilt rather than social disapproval. But the evolutionary function of guiltiness could still lie in signaling contrition (or whatever).
I think you are all confused! This is an area that confuses, thus we are all confused, but Robin was less confused at the start and then Bryan confused him again. i am trying to hold fast with the original flash of light I got from Robins momentary clear-sightedness.... Something along the lines of: We feel things in order to appease the other. We think things as determined by the other. There is nobody at home - only the other. So we do other things and not our own thing. Bryan bashed Robin on the head to remind him to stop thinking own thoughts, by telling him that we think own thoughts. The Social Brain is necessarily confused and confusing - and Scott Adams got it right.
Not only are we well aware of wanting as a different feeling from happiness
It isn't the phenomenology of wanting that's relevant; rather, that of want satisfaction.
Is that different from happiness? I think not. Every satisfaction of a want is accompanied by feelings of happiness (it seems to me). But the amount of happiness isn't generally proportionate to the strength of the want.
Happiness is for survival as much as wants. Without happiness, often suicide would be an attractive option. There is little more life draining than constant pain or boredom. Happiness shouldn't confuse short term gratification with long term progress. We are happiest when anticipating and eventually accomplishing. It also shouldn't confuse state with action. We were poorer in the 50s but were making more progress. We are richer now but making less. Memory will make the distant past more attractive than living through it, and knowledge of what will happen will make the future less, but loss of what we have would make the past less, while prospect of what we could have will make the future more. Happiness is best considered a journey than destination.
One standard story, and in fact the only story I’ve found so far in a quick search, is that happiness is just our mind’s way of telling us what we want.
This seems to be the standard story for economists but not for psychologists. The leading work (which I haven't read) is Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness." The idea (I've gathered) is that following our wants doesn't bring happiness. Happiness doesn't come naturally.
As I construe your addendum, Gilbert "calls for people to be happy and to teach them what leads to happiness." Is Gilbert manipulating folks into a congenial pattern of attachment and conformity?
From the standpoint of wants or preferences (read revealed utility), happiness (subjective well-being) is only one of various equally valid human wants. From the standpoint of happiness, satisfaction of wants is rational only insofar (to the limited extent that) their satisfaction engenders happiness.
To understand the interests behind standpoints that either emphasize or downplay subjective well-being, it might be useful to focus on where they importantly come apart. It seems that the strongest human wants whose satisfaction doesn't reliably produce happiness is the drive for status.
Question: Who wants people not to concern themselves with status?
Answer: People whose own status is experienced as low (beneath their real worth).
Folks who try to tell us how to be happy are telling us to attach less value to status.
"Calls for people to be happy, and to teach them what leads to happiness, can be seen as calls from associates to attach yourself more strongly to them and conform more strongly to their norms and pressures."
Can we test Robin's conclusion on this comment?
If you make conscious decisions that will make you happier, you will be happier - and you will over time beat the cautious brain. If you start doing more of what makes you smile and feel good, you will be happier. It does not have to be big changes. It can be small daily changes. I know it works. I have done it
Sounds like just an exercise in ideological conformity. If you've grown up (as most of us have) bombarded with the mantra "feminism GOOD, sixties GOOD, patriarchy BAD, fifties BAD" then naturally you won't tell a researcher you would like to live in the "bad" time.
Hi everybody - I stumpled over this post. I am a Happiness Enthusiast. Years ago I felt miserable, but today I am a happy guy.
The first question was:
Why did evolution makes us (sometimes) happy? Why did evolution makes us (sometimes) happy?
Researchers in the field of Positive Psychology say that we are simply born more worried than happy. 10.000 years ago the worried members of the tribe survived because a worried person made sure he/she had shelter and gathered food, while an optimist who was not cautious did not survive tigers or other hostile tribes.
But 10.000 years ago we also needed friends and bonding and love and sex. We got that when we felt safe. When we were secure we opened our self to new ideas and to positive emotions.
We are sometimes happy, because we feel sometimes secure.
Now most of us have shelter and enough food, but the brains default setting is still sat on being Worried...
However, the good news is: You can learn to be happy. Since Worriying/Caution/Fear is so dominant, you need 3 positive emotions/thougths/experiences to win over 1 negative feeling.
In essens: If you make conscious decisions that will make you happier, you will be happier - and you will over time beat the cautious brain. If you start doing more of what makes you smile and feel good, you will be happier. It does not have to be big changes. It can be small daily changes. I know it works. I have done it (-:
Response to Bryan Caplan's argument that happiness from "following one's dreams" is counterposed to affiliative gratifications from family and community:
Following one's dreams = Forging new associations that are more congenial and in which one enjoys higher status.
[The schoolboy's fantasy of following one's dreams is becoming a professional athlete. But always team sports!
[The primal human archetype of "following" might derive from our nomadic heritage. You follow your band--or (perhaps) you and some others split.]
Robin is very good on association. Being and extravert (where most social theorists are introverts) he has a comparative advantage in understanding association.
I use Robin's insight into happiness as an affiliation signal in "Consciousness, communication, and the pursuit of happiness" ( http://juridicalcoherence.b... )
You can’t be happier than the person you’re with. I’ve tried. It doesn’t go over well. - Scott Adams
This I don't get. I think the first sentence is true (hyperbolically). But it isn't because being happy doesn't go over well. This would actually contradict your insight; but reality tells us that unhappy folks like to be around those who "cheer them up" (which fits). (There are exceptions: it isn't polite to be happy over another's misfortunes or to show no empathy. Thus it is sometimes said that "misery loves company," but that's when schadenfreude allows a sense of enhanced status.)
My point is: There is no-one at home - even though the lights are on. It is just a reversal in perspective - but I think it is a useful one.
Groups of people may feel happier when they reach a consensus but that still means that individuals enjoy the feeling of consensus itself. There has to be someone at home, how else would the individuals of the group know the group is happier?
I'm just saying that maybe the locus of agency isn't the individual. Whereafter you can put it anywhere... Such as on the signal. The signal must be obeyed. Those who obey are the happy ones. The unhappy ones are those who try to staunch their obedience.
why happiness doesn’t encode our value for status and social approval, as it encodes so many other values
First about the cases of being born earlier and women's rights. This was a bad example because the explicit answer to the question is largely determined by the social desirability of the opinion rather than by the respondent's real proclivities. If folks answered the question honestly, they would choose what made them happiest. It is only when you are asked to make specific choices not couched in the language of happiness that the bias for wants usually shows up.
But you've already (implicitly) answered the question about why happiness doesn't encode our value of status (and of "social approval" in the sense of status-seeking as opposed to affiliation seeking). It was adaptive for humans to signal their satisfaction with the group, so the group can be confident of their loyalty. It would not typically be adaptive to signal your self-satisfaction regarding your status/power. This state is often best kept to oneself.
[See also my comment to Caplan's post.]
We feel things in order to appease the other.
There's an ambiguity in "in order to." I don't think Robin is prepared to commit himself on its precise application, which is why you sense confusion.
What you paint is the most extreme interpretation: our actual motivations are (whether consciously or subconsciously) motives to engage in signaling.
The less radical interpretation is that that they are historically derived from signaling and bear the earmarks of their origin but aren't necessarily motives to signal. For example, even at an unconscious level, we may be trying to avoid guilt rather than social disapproval. But the evolutionary function of guiltiness could still lie in signaling contrition (or whatever).
I think you are all confused! This is an area that confuses, thus we are all confused, but Robin was less confused at the start and then Bryan confused him again. i am trying to hold fast with the original flash of light I got from Robins momentary clear-sightedness.... Something along the lines of: We feel things in order to appease the other. We think things as determined by the other. There is nobody at home - only the other. So we do other things and not our own thing. Bryan bashed Robin on the head to remind him to stop thinking own thoughts, by telling him that we think own thoughts. The Social Brain is necessarily confused and confusing - and Scott Adams got it right.
Not only are we well aware of wanting as a different feeling from happiness
It isn't the phenomenology of wanting that's relevant; rather, that of want satisfaction.
Is that different from happiness? I think not. Every satisfaction of a want is accompanied by feelings of happiness (it seems to me). But the amount of happiness isn't generally proportionate to the strength of the want.
Happiness is for survival as much as wants. Without happiness, often suicide would be an attractive option. There is little more life draining than constant pain or boredom. Happiness shouldn't confuse short term gratification with long term progress. We are happiest when anticipating and eventually accomplishing. It also shouldn't confuse state with action. We were poorer in the 50s but were making more progress. We are richer now but making less. Memory will make the distant past more attractive than living through it, and knowledge of what will happen will make the future less, but loss of what we have would make the past less, while prospect of what we could have will make the future more. Happiness is best considered a journey than destination.
One standard story, and in fact the only story I’ve found so far in a quick search, is that happiness is just our mind’s way of telling us what we want.
This seems to be the standard story for economists but not for psychologists. The leading work (which I haven't read) is Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness." The idea (I've gathered) is that following our wants doesn't bring happiness. Happiness doesn't come naturally.
As I construe your addendum, Gilbert "calls for people to be happy and to teach them what leads to happiness." Is Gilbert manipulating folks into a congenial pattern of attachment and conformity?
From the standpoint of wants or preferences (read revealed utility), happiness (subjective well-being) is only one of various equally valid human wants. From the standpoint of happiness, satisfaction of wants is rational only insofar (to the limited extent that) their satisfaction engenders happiness.
To understand the interests behind standpoints that either emphasize or downplay subjective well-being, it might be useful to focus on where they importantly come apart. It seems that the strongest human wants whose satisfaction doesn't reliably produce happiness is the drive for status.
Question: Who wants people not to concern themselves with status?
Answer: People whose own status is experienced as low (beneath their real worth).
Folks who try to tell us how to be happy are telling us to attach less value to status.
"Calls for people to be happy, and to teach them what leads to happiness, can be seen as calls from associates to attach yourself more strongly to them and conform more strongly to their norms and pressures."
Can we test Robin's conclusion on this comment?
If you make conscious decisions that will make you happier, you will be happier - and you will over time beat the cautious brain. If you start doing more of what makes you smile and feel good, you will be happier. It does not have to be big changes. It can be small daily changes. I know it works. I have done it
Sounds like just an exercise in ideological conformity. If you've grown up (as most of us have) bombarded with the mantra "feminism GOOD, sixties GOOD, patriarchy BAD, fifties BAD" then naturally you won't tell a researcher you would like to live in the "bad" time.
Hi everybody - I stumpled over this post. I am a Happiness Enthusiast. Years ago I felt miserable, but today I am a happy guy.
The first question was:
Why did evolution makes us (sometimes) happy? Why did evolution makes us (sometimes) happy?
Researchers in the field of Positive Psychology say that we are simply born more worried than happy. 10.000 years ago the worried members of the tribe survived because a worried person made sure he/she had shelter and gathered food, while an optimist who was not cautious did not survive tigers or other hostile tribes.
But 10.000 years ago we also needed friends and bonding and love and sex. We got that when we felt safe. When we were secure we opened our self to new ideas and to positive emotions.
We are sometimes happy, because we feel sometimes secure.
Now most of us have shelter and enough food, but the brains default setting is still sat on being Worried...
However, the good news is: You can learn to be happy. Since Worriying/Caution/Fear is so dominant, you need 3 positive emotions/thougths/experiences to win over 1 negative feeling.
In essens: If you make conscious decisions that will make you happier, you will be happier - and you will over time beat the cautious brain. If you start doing more of what makes you smile and feel good, you will be happier. It does not have to be big changes. It can be small daily changes. I know it works. I have done it (-:
Why do we abhor being around depressed people? Because we take their depressed state as disapproval of us.