Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

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A fellow member of the double FAAH mutation club!

We meet every Tuesday, there are cookies :)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/a-world-withou...

I'm a little different, while I am occasionally happy at inappropriate moments, serious events affecting people really bring me down, like your average person. The death of someone close to me, for example, affected me very deeply and made me sad for a good while. But with the exception of that, I typically feel quite happy. Anything that's "just money" or "just stuff" usually won't shake me, for example I stayed in a pretty upbeat mood during the theft of most of my most valuable possessions in one go.

Personally, I would say whatever it is has had an extremely positive impact on my life. Aside from the huge benefit of just being happy, there's also the benefit of being more trusting (I accept random traveling strangers into my home via Couchsurfing) and doing all kinds of things I think I'd have skipped if I was more risk averse. And I've had some fun with the side effect of (to quote the New Yorker) seeming slightly baked.

Might be fun to make a social network of just those who have it: personally, I find that to a degree, I kind of have to hide my happiness and general contentment at life in order to not seem like an asshole to those around me struggling with various things. It'd be nice to have a place where that's not a concern. Perhaps we should all set up a Mastodon or something?

> make a social network of just those who have it

that does sound very interesting and useful, but also -- as a passerby who admittedly doesn't understand your condition at all :) -- if just one psychopath got in there, they could have a field day from manipulating a self-selected crowd of people who may be systematically easier to abuse with lower potential of negative consequences

I mean, I don't think I'd make it exclusionary and private to only people that pass a test or something. Perhaps anyone could join, just with the request that they have an open mind and be generally happy.

And no worries about not understanding it, some of the writing on it naturally focuses on the more extreme cases. If you met me IRL you'd just think I'm a normal guy, perhaps one that's just mostly upbeat. I don't have any worries about a psychopath infiltrating whatever future group for that reason: most people with it are just normal people, but happier.

The only thing I can think of is that people with it are usually a good bit less risk-averse. So perhaps there'd be someone pushing people into doing risky things. But I already do risky things: just my last trip pre-Corona I hitchhiked on a dump truck through two countries and a conflict zone :) Furthermore, I already evaluate the risk of most things I do and direct my life accordingly. (For example, I avoid excessive driving, and as such I do most of my medium or long distance travel in very safe modes of transportation like the TGV, which has never had a fatal accident in its many years of operation.)

You've given me an idea for a comedy: someone tries to infiltrate the group to get everyone to go on a risky adventure, he succeededs, and then the entire time he tries to hide that he's the only one stressing out at all the danger while everyone else is enjoying it and having a great time :)

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