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Comment by md224 | Hacker News Reader

While I agree with the gist of this article, I think it's walking a razor's edge to differentiate between a "happy" life and a "meaningful" life. I could argue that perhaps there isn't more to life than being happy, and what a meaningful life brings is a more complex form of happiness, a lasting reprieve from the existential terror that envelopes us between acts of isolated pleasure-seeking. So yes, you may report higher life satisfaction with a meaningful life vs. a "happy" one, but if you're going to define happiness in such a narrow, superficial way, then you're kind of guaranteeing this conclusion.

I think a better title would've been "There's more to life than seeking selfish pleasure." But this is more linguistic nitpicking than anything else.

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This post can be added to the pile of why HN discussions are getting more and more pedantically lame.

The post adds so little. And even in the post, it acknowledges this, yet has so many words/syllables/phrases to read through just for everyone, even the poster, to come to the same conclusion.

I really don't like being negative. I guess it's the negative pedantry that has bothered me to the point of saying something. If I'm in the minority and just venting, apologies (My comment might just be the ticket to get it out of my system).

No, the post is spot-on about how the article is really just playing with definitions. What the post is doing is what LessWrong calls "dissolving the question"[1].

Reword the article to be pointing out that "There's more to life than immediate hedonistic pleasure seeking activities". Now, most people just agree with it. Instead, if you play with multiple meanings of "being happy", you can try to create a sense of insight or deepness where none exists.

As to why the post added a disclaimer, perhaps he wanted to be polite and not sound offensive to what Frankl has accomplished. (Me too: I'm not saying Frankl's work was not good, just the style the article portrays.)

1: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/

Talking about the place of meaning and happiness in life is philosophy, and philosophy is a lot like math in that you can't jump into the middle of something and think you know what "well-ordered" or "compact" or "happiness" mean. It isn't pedantry to dissect the meanings of commonplace words in an article like this, especially since Frankl's understanding of happiness is apparently different from the definition of happiness used in the psychological research the article discusses.

I disagree. Complaining about typos and grammatical errors and "distinctions without a difference" is pedantry. But the use of words matters in philosophical subjects, and there's a big difference in implied meaning between "meaning is better than happiness" and "complex happiness is better than simple happiness".

This is just a reflection of the sorry state of the publishing industry.

We are fast approaching the point when one cannot expect a robust piece of writing (specialized or general) of lasting worth, unless its behind a paywall.

Frankly I don't blame them. Although some new entrants like QZ (dot) com and very few others are trying, there have been no inroads made in this direction, over the past five years.

We need some form of a micropayments mechanism to incentivize good work.

Agreed, and the saddest part is I think anybody with half a brain can see it coming, and nobody wants it, but we'll wind up there anyway.

It's sort of a great example why the idea of a good "race to the bottom" no longer excites but rather uneases me. We've just gotten so darn good at reaching new lows.

We talk to computers. We are not computers.

I thought his post and the original article were very human.

Um, what?

Exactly. One thing I have noticed in the U.S. is that pleasure, happiness, and joy have slowly become synonyms, which is way off the mark, IMO.

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