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Comment by JackPoach | Hacker News Reader

Should we be measuring at all? Claiming that people have to be more happy over time is a weird proposition for a biologist like me. Not only happiness does not exist (see reification), the idea that it can be 'measured and improved' is silly. Should the next generation of birds be more happy and fulfilled than the previous one? Should the next generation of chimps have stronger lasting relationships? Does it even makes sense? To me it doesn't. We are biological creatures and each one of us chooses to construct meaning of life (or lack thereof) individually.

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> Should the next generation of birds be more happy and fulfilled than the previous one? Should the next generation of chimps have stronger lasting relationships? Does it even makes sense?

Happiness is a proxy for successful adaptation to reality. So yes, if they are successfully adapting to the changing environment, they should be happy. The very least, failing at it will make them pretty “unhappy”.

> We are biological creatures and each one of us chooses to construct meaning of life (or lack thereof) individually.

A weird level of resolution to stop at. We’re also atomic creatures, maybe we shouldn’t care about death? But we’re also conscious creatures that suffer and maybe at least avoiding that is pretty meaningful? I don’t think any nihilist is nihilistic enough to self-immolate for example.

You could DIY your meaning individually, as is the fashionable belief in this age of post-modern, but it’s liable to crumbling tragically with an inopportune contact with reality. Normativity of reality seeking is a strongly built instinct in any species that knows they have to survive in it, and their meaning emerges from this relationship.

As I understand, happiness is free time from necessary work. Quote from book Hunnicutt, Free time:

Benjamin Franklin, agreeing that “the happiness of individuals is evidently the ultimate end of political society,” offered his vision of Higher Progress: If every man and woman would work for four hours each day on some- thing useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life, want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and happiness.

Also Epicur: "Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest, sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of ataraxia (tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of bodily pain) through knowledge of the workings of the world and limiting desires. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism

Wouldn't it then be easier and more logical to set the goal as 'reduction of work hours from ... to...'?

Personally, I don't believe that working less (or more) makes people happy (unhappy), but my whole point is that defining your future goals in terms of happiness and attempting to measure it is futile by definition.

On the whole, I think people's happiness depends on those people, rather than their material circumstances. After all, there's only so miserable you can get (or so cheerful). Most people are wealthier; but even very wealthy people evidently think they don't have enough money.

I don't mean to suggest that miserable circumstances don't make you miserable; just that circumstances that are twice as awful don't seem to make people twice as miserable. I suspect that most mediaeval peasants were about as cheerful as most ordinary people today.

I can tell whether I am happy or not. What do you mean when you say happiness doesn't exist?

Do you understand the concept of reification? If not, see

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/reification#:~:text=Re....

So if you feel happy (or miserable) it means just that - that you feel happy (or miserable). It doesn't mean that happiness or misery actually exist literally.

Reification is usually a fallacy when we take the abstraction too far. The canonical example being "the map is not the territory" where someone confuses every mark on a map with actual features of the terrain.

One could argue that abstractions "actually exist literally" without being physical. Gravitational fields don't exist physically but do exist and they're a valid abstraction that's useful to measure. Maybe happiness is a phenomenon that could be useful too (though I would say to a lesser extent.)

A little tangential but... even things that we would say exist physically are not on closer inspection. Does a chair actually exist or is it a platonic ideal that we apply to a collection of atoms assembled to form four legs, seat and a back?

You are absolutely correct. Moreover, reifications can be useful or harmful - purely based on how they are being used. That's why maps are actually useful, except for several individuals that died in Australia and other places by trusting their navigators more than their own eyes and actual surroundings. I've been in situations where GPS malfunctioned and when I quickly realized it I understood that I should not follow the map.

If you grant that is possible to "feel happy" (for whatever definition of "happy" you choose), then happiness can be defined the state (or the "emotion") of feeling happy. Sure, happiness is not a concrete entity (though it does have concrete/physical underpinnings in people's brains), so in this sense it doesn't "exist literally", but I don't know where you're going with that. You can still measure it and devise strategies to have people experience more of it.

Doesn't happiness exist in the sense that there is a complex set of chemical combinations happening in your brain emitting the feeling of happiness?

Maybe, maybe not - you'd have to define which complex set of chemical combination is happiness and which isn't. But why? We know a lot about neurochemistry. We know a lot about receptors, neuromodulators and their interactions (serotonin, addiction). As a biologist I don't understand - why would you want even study something that doesn't exist (happiness), when you can study specific parts of neurochemistry that are more practical and may have actual benefits (like reduction of addiction or help with schizophrenia)

That's a silly strawman. Nobody is claiming that happiness exists literally.

And it's intangible nature does nothing to prevent us from measuring or maximizing aggregate happiness.

Well, not any more than chairs :P

I'd say happiness exists exactly as much as chairs, in both cases we are classifying what is, in reality, just a collection of atoms, either as a chair or as a happy person, based on some external measurments

So by your logic, everything that doesn't literally exist (laws, businesses, emotions, software, governments, money, etc.) are all things that can't be measured or improved?

No, it's not my logic and your conclusion is incorrect. Measurement units don't actually exist (meters, seconds, inches, pounds, liters) - yet that's how we measure things and very successfully.

Abstractions are critical to human thinking in science. But not only reification is very different, you can't measure happiness even if you want to. You'll always have to go 'happiness as defined ...' or resort to people self reporting their feelings. Which is fine - I always ask my kids how they feel. I just understand that not only kids and adults may change how they feel next hour but that those feelings are unreliable. If you have kids of your own, you know how many 'tragedies' they lived through by the age of 6.

> You'll always have to go 'happiness as defined ...'

How is one meter defined?

You claim that happiness cannot be measured, yet in the next sentence you talk about measuring it by self reporting. One unreliable way of measuring doesn't equal to “cannot be measured”.

My argument is as follows - happiness can not AND should not be measured.

Now, that doesn't mean that you can't define happiness as you want it and pursue it on an individual level. For instance - walking in the park makes you 'happy' (as self reported feeling). Yoga makes you happy. Meditation makes you happy. Great - go for it.

BUT it's pointless to even attempt to measure 'group happiness' and try to increase it. People make pointless statements and point fingers in on the wrong directions. The article is about technology and I am sick and tired listening to how technology makes people unhappy or happy. Governments are often blamed for policies that make people unhappy. Society is probably blamed the most for people not being happy. It's too materialistic, the goals are wrong, bla-bla-bla.

BTW Here's the exact meter definition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

Thanks for the pointer. It seems that there is no such thing as a meter except the “meter as defined”. And when people discovered that measuring length is not as reliable as they wanted, they didn't say it “can not AND should not be measured”. Instead, they found better ways of measuring it.

If happiness is not as well defined or well-behaved as we would like it to be, perhaps we can make it better rather than dismissing the problem.

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