chickenmonkey

Really fascinating! Reminds me of my community of international students at college.

I had a lot of fun playing Civ V growing up, and a decent chunk of that was looking up quotes from the game time to time.

One of my favorite ones is the one that pops up when you research Biology: “If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.” – Lyall Watson

It illustrates a simple philosophical question, which has endless potential for nuance.

That's helpful. Thanks!

As a college sophomore majoring in Physics, I'm curious: what level of student is this text accessible to?

I'm not sure, but from a class I'm taking right now, I have a faint inkling that the lesser light you let in, the more resolution you have i.e the more you're able to distinguish between two close together objects.

I really don't think that this article makes a very good case for nations to focus on happiness over economic growth. It is apparent that the nations that the article states are the happiest are highly developed nations which have had decades of growth which has given them the means to keep their population happy. With regard to the point about China's growth, I believe that given how rapidly China is growing, there will be a significant lag between the rate at which GDP grows and the time when the Chinese people begin receiving the benefits of this growth.

Of course, general well-being is a better metric of whether the incumbent gets voted in than economic growth in developed countries because well-being is far more tangible to the common man than the abstract concept of economic growth. OTOH, in a developing country, I'd argue growth is a better indicator of the probability that the incumbent will win since developing countries have growth rates which are in general far higher than developed, and since these high growth rates result in visible, tangible changes: bridges get built, schools are opened, and people get jobs.

Perhaps, the new thesis of the article should be that developing nations should focus on economic growth, while developed ones should focus on the happiness of their people.