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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

> we equate freedom with freedom from labor.

Negative freedoms are half a deal. All the old philosophers have a lot to teach us. We just don't have time to pay attention to them now.

Maybe Nietzsche said it well:

"Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that"

What did he mean?

> So if we aren't optimizing happiness, why not?

Because "happiness" isn't a thing. It's an idea we have about a thing that most of us are not courageous enough to name, let alone take for ourselves.

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Its hard to enlighten your way into happiness when you have an infection. I think alot of “happiness” is based in health, physical, emotional, and the health of those you interact with. Atleast those are somewhat quantifiable ways to avoid needless suffering.

Yep. I am sure many a war was started because someone had a toothache.

For equivalent levels of wealth, people who think less are usually happier. The reason thinking causes happiness is that thinking tends to cause wealth.

Happiness is a thing, but the thing it is, is roughly just “whatever internal state is (largely involuntarily) reflected outwardly in order to indicate to others that things are going well (typically compared to some baseline) in one’s evaluation”.

One’s happiness is for others to see, so they know what is good for oneself. One should often work to further the happiness of others because this is often in many ways a pretty good proxy for what is to their benefit, but for oneself, one tends to have better access to what is to one’s benefit, and what one wants, than what one would get just by evaluating the impacts on one’s own happiness, instead of what that happiness is a proxy for. (Though possibly one might fool oneself about some things regarding what one wants, and taking into account one’s own happiness may at times help defend against fooling oneself this way?)

> One should often work to further the happiness of others because this is often in many ways a pretty good proxy for what is to their benefit

That's one of the best definitions of happiness I've heard. Nicely put sir.

> Happiness is a thing, but the thing it is, is roughly just “whatever internal state is (largely involuntarily) reflected outwardly in order to indicate to others that things are going well (typically compared to some baseline) in one’s evaluation”.

Not at all necessary, there is plenty of literature -- and I know such people out there as well -- whose happiness almost doesn't manifest. It's an internal process and you can tell they are happy when you see them (facial expression, look in the eyes, general demeanor) but they in no shape or form try to indicate things are going well for them. Not by saying things on the topic, not by proving it with numbers (e.g. a number of houses/flats they own), and not even by trying to preach their approach to life to other people.

I meant that their facial expression, look in their eyes, etc. is an unconscious (and therefore harder to fake) signal of whether things are going well for them.

I didn't mean that people are happy when they intend to communicate that things are going well for them, but rather, happiness is that which leads them to unconsciously communicate it. (where by "going well for them" I mean like, "for what they care about". Someone could by in their dying moments, but receive very good news about e.g. their loved ones and their life's work, and be happy.)

Not sure about the cultural dig at the English (that was probably very context-dependent and an in-joke for Germans/German speakers). But in general, Nietzsche probably meant something like "Man strives for power" by which he might have meant something more like self-expression that raw physical or political power.

I would personally say that most people strive for meaning (as in, living a meaningful life) even if they think they are striving for "happiness", which to me comes off as a very shallow and hedonistic aim.

I'd imagine it's a jab at Bentham and Mill, the utilitarians. Bentham even thought happiness could be measured in units called 'hedons.'

Equating hedonism with happiness (if that's what he did) is hilariously wrong however.

> probably very context-dependent and an in-joke for Germans/German speakers)

I may have heard... it was specifically a barb aimed at John Stuart Mill.

Contentedness, idle comfort, and calm recreation are things though. I’m sure a zillion other people could name the zillion times more things which either give them joy or which they could anticipate finding joy in. It’s not an empty observation that some subset (however ill defined) or people find disappointment finishing whatever their task. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with your reference to philosophy, but I think it’s all too easy to use a philosophical observation that a concept isn’t “a thing” when what you mean is probably it’s an abstraction for lots of things with disparate factors and implications.

> but I think it’s all too easy to use a philosophical observation that a concept isn't "a thing" when what you mean is probably it's an abstraction for lots of things with disparate factors and implications

Absolutely. And it's a bit of an empty neologism. What I'm getting at is those things we think we've a solid definition of, but are slippery and gets away. The "thing" is the misguided idea that there's a common 'object' there.

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