What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy

We are unhappy with our wants, because we are being overpromised on how much happiness those wants will deliver. Advertising and politicians are probably the worst offenders here. We desire and pursue certain wants (big house, luxurious car, tropical vacation) only to later get disappointed with their quality and utility once we have them. Then we report in the form that we are unhappy because we don’t use the two extra bedrooms that cost extra to heat, that luxurious car costs fortune in insurance and fuel, and the tropical vacation turned out to be a nightmare with roaches, bedbugs and salmonella outbreak.

"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get".

I wonder what the default emotion is of most other creatures, specifically other mammals? To me, happiness is just a signal, just like sadness, anger, etc. It's your body telling you something is "good" or "bad" but isn't necessarily a natural feeling to be had 24/7.

"Economists and other happiness researchers consistently find that longer commutes are associated with unhappiness. Yet people still pay quite a lot to live in far-flung exurbs."

This feels like an over simplification — the article makes it sound like the individuals don't weigh the benefits correctly.

Anecdotally know a few people in this position who do this because they have to get up earlier but their kids grow up beside woods & heaths rather than in suburbs/city. So you've people doing something which makes themselves unhappier because it makes their family happier (in theory) which they get happiness / satisfaction from.

If it's possible to desire things without happiness, what is the evolutionary rationale for happiness at all? Maybe what we call "happiness" is only one type of positive feedback among many of which we might be less aware.

From PG about this article: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1134755140802633730

I don't think economists really have such a narrow idea of utility. Usually it is applied in abstract models, where utility is predefined (like a lottery where you can win money, and the amount you win is used as the utility - no need to consider how happy it might make the theoretical player).

For the real world, I think evolutionary aspects have to be taken into account. A single actor may not act rational, but in the long term, the actors making the rational choice will prevail by the power of evolution. So rational choices will be made in the long run, even if it may not even be deliberation of the actors.

Also, don't forget that happiness research itself may also be wrong. I think the classic about people without children supposedly being less happy than people with children points in that direction. By the standard research methodology, watching Netflix on the couch all the time would probably make people the most happy.

> More egalitarian economists will tend to value the utility of the poor and disadvantaged more than the utility of the wealthy, but fundamentally it’s still about giving people what they desire.

That's not true, I think. What egalitarian economists would argue is that an extra dollar for the poor and disadvantaged buys a lot more utility than an extra dollar for the wealthy, and therefore (because said economist values their utility equally) extra dollars should go to the poor and disadvantaged.

(Though most economists shy away from interpersonal utility comparisons, which is what gives rise to the concept of pareto optimality.)

There's a passage from Existential Comics[0] that is relevant:

>Utilitarianism, as described by philosophers such as Bentham, Mill, and Singer, is roughly the idea that morality should be based purely on what causes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In his novel, Notes From the Underground, Dostoyevsky made a strong objection to this style of ethics, imploring us to imagine a world where Utilitarianism as a project was finished. The perfect world was created and it was known what would make us the most happy. He said at this point, the human would rebel, and reject the system. He claimed that if there was a single value that was held most high - human freedom, then no moral system could be perfect, because it would rob us of that freedom. He claimed that if happiness was indeed the ultimate goal of life, then all of human history has been a mistake. That is to say, if you observe individual humans in history, they have seldom sought out happiness for themselves. They have instead sought out only what they sought out. What they desired was merely what they desired, and often it had nothing to do with happiness, be it art, ambition, conquest, to have children, or merely spite - what they wanted to do was what they wanted to do, and the further explanation of their desire making them "happy" was superfluous, and unrelated to what their desire to be free.

[0] http://existentialcomics.com/comic/236

Articles about this usually focus on frivolous wants, like Facebook likes. But it's also true of more worthwhile wants. If you want to cure cancer, and eventually succeed, you won't be any happier after an initial rush. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be driven by such wants.

See also previous discussion about the paper from 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863 (31 comments)

This is probably somehow coded in human's mechanism. People's happiness and sadness are relative, and it's all dynamic. Most of those who won a really big lottery don't last happy as long as they thought. Most of those who lost their legs will accept the truth after a while and find it's bad but it's not all that bad.

This makes some people keep pursuing higher goals, while some other people find to get out of the loop is to enjoy their life right now.

Despite the fact that Bentham is the first name that comes into mind when speaking on utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill pushed the boundaries of it and actually addressed what utility is and how can it be measured. As article implies, the utility of a thing should be measured for each individual so that the person extract more happiness from it. I strongly suggest to read Mill’s utilitarianism if someone is looking more information about this topic.

“Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug — in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than the pursuit of happiness.”

This is a good point.

About happiness:

I'm out of years of mental, physical, joblessness issues. I just took a newb car mechanic position. It was exhausting, sometimes problematic (difficult to mesh programmer precision fetishism with mechanics regular brute force approach)... but there's a deep bliss in forgetting what I/you want and just do things. The balance is subtle.

"One of these things is Facebook, by far the world's largest social-networking site. In a recent paper, economists Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer and Matthew Gentzkow investigated how much money they had to pay Facebook users in order to get them to deactivate the Facebook app for one or two months. They found that the median amount was $100, and the average was $180 (the latter being larger because a few users really loved Facebook).

This suggests that Facebook, which is free to use, generates a huge amount of utility — more than $370 billion a year in consumer surplus in the U.S. alone. This bolsters the argument of those who believe that free digital services have added a lot of unmeasured output to the global economy.

But Allcott et al. also found that the people who deactivated Facebook as part of the experiment were happier afterward, reporting higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety. The change was modest but significant — equal to about 25 to 40 percent of the beneficial effect typically reported for psychotherapy.

Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug — in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than the pursuit of happiness."

Another possibility is that your analysis is completely illogical and therefore wrong. People who quit facebook are self-selected. Their experiences doesn't necessarily reflect those who remain on the platform.

As I’ve gotten older I find that my wants are fewer, and the list of things I truly care about has gotten much shorter. I’m happy with what I have now and grateful for the basic things (family, health, work I enjoy).

Consider making as many good experiences as you can, rather than accumulating more things.

If you want the wrong things, for the wrong reasons, to the wrong degree, etc, then duh, of course you'll be unhappy. We are the heirs of thousands of years of thought on the subject and yet we walk around oblivious to millennia of wisdom. WE know better, of course, because we came later.

An obnoxious dogma of liberalism (as in Lockean philosophy, not as in liberal institutions -- a VERY important distinction as the latter does not require the former) seems to be that any desire is an axiomatically and unquestionable good always, with no reference to human nature and what human nature tells us is good. (I won't name the recent manifestations of the late stage liberal freak show.) Human nature is what allows us to determine whether a desire is disordered or not such a pica, pedophilia, or zoophilia, though as the full consequences of liberalism manifest, I would not be surprised if these will eventually be "discredited" as bigoted, narrow-minded, and hateful cultural and social constructions. Ideology, as always, is impervious and blind to reason, so I will no doubt be downvoted given how deeply the poison of Lockean thought has penetrated into our culture. When hedonism has possessed a man, there is not even the slightest willingness to consider the truth, and if he were to witness it, he would likely fail to recognize it because of how blinded he's become by the mindless pursuit of pleasure.

If you want to learn something about happiness, we have to look to insights of the classical tradition and not the lunacy that seized the world not 20 minutes ago. Pieper, for example, has written an excellent book on the four cardinal virtues. He's very lucid and speaks directly to the understanding. That's just the beginning.

Some things, very few things are genuinely wanted and we value them all along.

The rest that follows, not so much. Wanting to want is the fun, not getting what you want. Once you have it, you want something else, then the pursuit of wanting it.

The best you can do is inform people about known risks and benefits, as best as you can. For instance, I smoke, and I know that it’s bad, but I do it anyway because I know that I’ll enjoy life more than the years that I will lose.

Getting what you want is boring. The fun is in working to achieve it.

For example, writing a check to get your dream car is boring. Designing and building your dream car out of parts is loads of fun.

I don't use social media, but I do sometimes wonder whether my iPhone has a net negative impact on my life. Has anyone tried downsizing to a flip phone for a few months to compare?

Company A makes a product that truly solves a need, as in, buying or consuming its cure, you have no further need to consume it ever again. There is true utility, but there is no further marginal utility to be gained from subsequent consumption. For example: a company selling cookwear that is so good that its pots and pans are handed down the generations. Once you hae a set you nor the one that inherits from you will ever have to buy cookwear again. Long term these companies fail because the eat their own market.

Company B makes a product that does not solve your need, but provides a mere temporary relief. If you want to keep your problem 'solved', you have to perpetually buy the relief. In the above cookwear example, sell pans that are 10 times cheaper than those of company A, but they only last for 2 years until they bend or crack, so you need to buy a new set of crappy pans every 2 years. Unlike A, company B does not usurp it's own market. They can in theory keep selling junk cookware forever. This is partly why we live in a world filled with crap that breaks all the time, but unfortunately there is even worse.

Company C is a more nefarious type of 'B' company. It's products increase the problem at the same time they provide the temporary relief, thus increasing their own demand or making escaping the downward spiral harder and harder. We recognize and regulate against a few of these types of products, often fast acting ones (crack cocaine), but the vast majority can keep dodging regulation for a very long time (tobacco, alcohol, sugar, ...)

Company D is the true champion of the neo-liberal market economy though. It provides a product with genuine utility, that doesn't necessarily have the slippery slope built into it, but creates it nevertheless through externalities. A typical example of this is a car. It provides undeniably great benefits to person buying the car (personal mobility), while at the same time impacting the lives of all in a slightly negative way (pollution, use of public space, noise, ...). Let's say in a small model world where everyone starts with a 'happiness score' of 0, that the car 'buyer' gets a solid +500 happiness points, while everyone gets a shared -1. Yes, we might feel a little worse at the start, but that -1 is easy to offset with a solid net +499 I get the moment I also buy that desirable car. It is not until much further down the line, when the cumulative unhappiness has reached levels that not even a +499 buy can rectify, that some enlightened soul can observe we might have been better of without cars altogether in terms of happiness, but even at the point where people would realize this, they individually only have the choice between buying and at least get a +499 added even though the overall happiness score will still be far under water and sinking, or personally forego the consumption and still be 499 happiness points worse off. Personal abstention doesn't solve anything, apart from maybe a slight moral feelgood, as it is the consumption of all others that creates the systemic misery. This is why 'vote with your wallet' is a pretty hollow, even cynical phrase, in these types of situations.

Economists like to portray 'the market' as a fight among type A companies one-upping better 'solutions'. In reality it is the type B,C, and D companies that are systemically selected for long term, and that explains why we are consuming ourselves into perpetual unhappiness.

Mostly never.