7 ms·

> Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. This is super true. I've been congratulating myself all month on my new job, pay

by kough 9y ago

> Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. This is super true. I've been congratulating myself all month on my new job, paying me BIG BUCKS, compared to my friends. Well, just found out an old friend of mine also found a new job, getting payed literally twice as much as me. Now I'm in a funk and it's irrational and stupid but I can't help but look at the same number in a totally different way.

taneq 9y ago
It's not irrational or stupid. It's human. We've evolved to be not merely effective but also competitive.
- kungito 9y ago
  Isn't competitiveness at the core of biological evolution and not something we have "evolved to"?
  - taneq 9y ago
    I don't understand the distinction. Competition is at the core of biological evolution and so we, like all living creatures, have evolved to be competitive.
    - Blahah 9y ago
      Many living creatures have evolved to be co-operative (including humans). Some (like humans) are often individually competitive within a larger co-operative social system. Others (like ants, bees, mole rats, some shrimps, etc.) are individually altruistic and collectively eusocial or hypersocial. Evolution is competitive at a systematic, somewhat abstract level: traits that promote perpetuation of themselves given the environmental constrains tend to prosper, and if the pool of resources is limited, the prospering of some traits will probably be detrimental to the prospering of others. The distinction is between competition in the sense of individuals or groups competing, over things that are often irrelevant with respect to evolution, vs the fundamental principle that given a set of environmental constraints and a limited pool of resources, an entity that can repeatedly propagate more effectively than others will tend towards a greater relative abundance. The fact that many extremely successful species are not individually competitive proves that evolution does not require all winners to be individually competitive.
    - pasquinelli 9y ago
      competition is not at the core of evolution, survival is. competition emerges when the survival of one requires another not to survive. is that relatively rare or commonplace? i think it's rare but it's down to ideology.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >Isn't competitiveness at the core of biological evolution and not something we have "evolved to"? In short? No. Fitness is.
  - aninhumer 9y ago
    I think the confusion here is due to the semantic ambiguity of "competitiveness". A tournament can be called competitive and a participant can be called competitive, but these don't mean quite the same thing. Evolution is inherently competitive, but humans become competitive by evolution.
- eivarv 9y ago
  The one doesn't preclude the other, though. It's also highly contextual, i.e. behaviors we've evolved (for some reason or another) aren't necessarily useful in another context. Humans are irrational and stupid.
- ionised 9y ago
  I'm not sure that these tendencies are entirely effective in the modern era.
donpdonp 9y ago
The most effective way to be unhappy - comparing yourself to others. Its far more satisfying to 'impress yourself', ie do better than you did before. I also like to remember that such comparisons are usually between your every day existance and their 'highlight reel'.
- Joe-Z 9y ago
  >Its far more satisfying to 'impress yourself' I find that this is something that sometimes sort of just happens to me, when I get aware of something I'm doing better now than, say, a year before. But, I never really consciously decide to do that, because then I find it just doesn't work. Like the cliché of standing in front of a mirror and saying to yourself "today is gonna be a good day" (Has that ever worked for anybody? Where is this meme coming from?)
  - brian-armstrong 9y ago
    Stuart Smalley, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Smalley#Catchphrases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Smalley#Catchphrases
  - mseebach 9y ago
    It works, but no, it won't turn night into day. It's about making sure you take a moment to appreciate the good things you experience. It's about making an effort to not assume malice when there's a plausible positive or neutral explanation for someones behaviour. It's about the fact that if you smile at people and say good morning, they'll return the favour more often than if you frown and don't. It's about making peace with the things you can't change. It's about not dismissing this stuff as happy-clappy bullshit, but about giving you energy to address the things that actually matter, rather than just going around being angry at the world.
    - Joe-Z 9y ago
      Okay, I can see that. That's what I try to do too. Altough I see these thinking habits as more of a short-term happiness boost than a tool for feeling satisfied with my life (which I would categorize as a more longer-lasting feeling, independent of my normal up/down mood-cycles).
danielbarla 9y ago
In addition to what others have already said, noticing this is a step in a good direction. Having a clear idea of just how strange and arbitrary our emotions can be is a great antidote.
fossuser 9y ago
This is not unique to humans. Check out: https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg It takes a lot of effort to learn not to resent accomplishments of people you’re “competing” with even if they’re friends and you’re not directly competing with them. It’s a learned behavior to feel good for them instead. There’s probably a selected reason for this, but it’s possible to overcome it (or at least be aware of its affect). It’s better to frame life success on something else - like what you want to learn or the type of person you want to be.
- Hendrikto 9y ago
  I have this strange dichotomy where I am happy if my friends succeed, but I am also kind of happy if they don‘t. Seems like I learned to feel good for other people‘s accomplishments, but I haven‘t unlearned comparing myself to them, and feeling good if I accomplish something they do not.
  - Sean1708 9y ago
    I suppose it's better than feeling unhappy if they do succeed and unhappy if they don't.
spyckie2 9y ago
I think this and many other problems are just too new. It's not that we can't cope - human beings have amazing mechanisms to adapt to harsh situations - but rather so many problems are new enough that there is little prior societal understanding and defense for it. When a problem is widespread enough to affect many members of society, the practices and solutions to that problem eventually enter the social vocabulary and become common knowledge. Social culture is filled with antibodies to past problems - college, seat belts, smoking, fitness - just to name a few things ingrained in society that passively guards our well being. It's when new problems that affect entire generations emerge too quickly, there's not yet good common advice for how to deal.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Oh the many ways in which one can make themselves unhappy. For me it's not about how much I earn, but the kind of things I get to do. The other day I've seen a trailer of a series on Netflix - Mars Generation, I think? I couldn't even finish it, because when I saw those kids doing the things I always wanted, it made me think about all similar realizations - that e.g. my university started doing things with rockets and satellites just after I graduated, that left and right I see cool spacetech opportunities offered to students only, etc. I'm having a hard time dealing with the fact I was just born few years too early. It's a stupid, irrational jealousy.
- Tomis02 9y ago
  It's not stupid and it's not irrational. What you're feeling is normal - the unfairness of other people given the chance to do what you would've liked to do. It's not their fault, but still.
tugberkk 9y ago
I'm sorry it is not about that topic in hand; but I just read 'BIG BUCKS' like Frank did in Scarface.
tmnvix 9y ago
"Every time my friends succeed, I die a little." - Gore Vidal
Spearchucker 9y ago
Age fixes that. Used to feel much the same. Now (approaching 50) I just couldn't give a shit anymore. A friend I've grown distant from over the last 4 years or so bought a 911 GT3 RS last year. And suddenly I hear from him. And I marvel at the waste. Purchases like that are meaningful on only two days - the day you buy it, and the day you sell it. I think a mid-20's me might've liked a car like that for the sex it could get me. Making more money than me is great. Really. If making more money than me is important to you I KNOW I'm having more fun than you are. Somehow, somewhere in the last 5 years or so I've become content. I scratch-build model cars now in my spare time, and that's where I compete - with myself. Crazy fulfilling.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- funnelsgun 9y ago
  I'd argue that a 911 GT3 RS is not a waste. I would love to own a GT3, let alone a GT3 RS. Most GT3 RS owners are motorsport lovers, and use their GT3 RS for its true purpose. Motorsport and track events are also a great place to make new friends, as are organized road trips to incredible places in the world such as the PetrolHead tours.
  - Spearchucker 9y ago
    I've done the motorsport thing. Drove a '79 M1 around the Nordschleife once. And yes, that experience has value to me, but knowing I did and another hasn't doesn't make me better, or them worse. It just... is. And I'm glad the M1 wasn't mine.
    - funnelsgun 9y ago
      I was at the Nurburgring this summer! I loved it so much I’m going to go back next summer. Of course, owners are entitled to do whatever they please with their cars - but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing to see a GT3 RS, or any other track car, spend it’s life in start stop traffic in London.
  - 9y ago
k__ 9y ago
I often have it the other way around with a friend. Somehow only in the things he cares about. He has a car and a much better PC, still he envies my money.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Well, with your money he could buy an even better car and PC than he has!
bluGill 9y ago
When things like that happen to me I look at my 401k and other savings and remember that someday in the future I will get to enjoy things in life they will never be able to afford.
swat535 9y ago
This might be my inner Canadian speaking but in my experience, it is much easier to feel joy when a friend of mine succeeds than envy him. I feel much happier when people in my social circle are well off and living a great life. I have also found that helping those around me succeed, whether financially, or personally, usually improves my own quality of life in someway (not always of course). I also fully agree that one should only compare self to oneself. After all we are all unique IMHO happiness is truly achieved when shared :)
- alashley 9y ago
  > This might be my inner Canadian speaking but in my experience, it is much easier to feel joy when a friend of mine succeeds than envy him. In my personal experience, I'd say this is a very unique quality to have. Not all friends and family members can be like this.
smallnamespace 9y ago
> irrational and stupid Is it irrational and stupid? In a society at the limits of of its resources and stuck in a Malthusian trap, there is often zero-sum competition between members of the society. Until the modern period and real technological growth, most humans lived in societies that were approaching local research constraints. Famine was common. If your neighbor had a bit more, it's likely because you had a bit less. In that sort of a situation, learning that your peer makes twice as much as you thought is revealing quite a few things: e.g. you could have found a way to get paid much more and society is less equal or 'fair' than you thought.

by kough 9y ago

taneq 9y ago

It's not irrational or stupid. It's human. We've evolved to be not merely effective but also competitive.

kungito 9y ago
Isn't competitiveness at the core of biological evolution and not something we have "evolved to"?
- taneq 9y ago
  I don't understand the distinction. Competition is at the core of biological evolution and so we, like all living creatures, have evolved to be competitive.
  - Blahah 9y ago
    Many living creatures have evolved to be co-operative (including humans). Some (like humans) are often individually competitive within a larger co-operative social system. Others (like ants, bees, mole rats, some shrimps, etc.) are individually altruistic and collectively eusocial or hypersocial. Evolution is competitive at a systematic, somewhat abstract level: traits that promote perpetuation of themselves given the environmental constrains tend to prosper, and if the pool of resources is limited, the prospering of some traits will probably be detrimental to the prospering of others. The distinction is between competition in the sense of individuals or groups competing, over things that are often irrelevant with respect to evolution, vs the fundamental principle that given a set of environmental constraints and a limited pool of resources, an entity that can repeatedly propagate more effectively than others will tend towards a greater relative abundance. The fact that many extremely successful species are not individually competitive proves that evolution does not require all winners to be individually competitive.
  - pasquinelli 9y ago
    competition is not at the core of evolution, survival is. competition emerges when the survival of one requires another not to survive. is that relatively rare or commonplace? i think it's rare but it's down to ideology.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Isn't competitiveness at the core of biological evolution and not something we have "evolved to"? In short? No. Fitness is.
- aninhumer 9y ago
  I think the confusion here is due to the semantic ambiguity of "competitiveness". A tournament can be called competitive and a participant can be called competitive, but these don't mean quite the same thing. Evolution is inherently competitive, but humans become competitive by evolution.
eivarv 9y ago
The one doesn't preclude the other, though. It's also highly contextual, i.e. behaviors we've evolved (for some reason or another) aren't necessarily useful in another context. Humans are irrational and stupid.
ionised 9y ago
I'm not sure that these tendencies are entirely effective in the modern era.

donpdonp 9y ago

The most effective way to be unhappy - comparing yourself to others. Its far more satisfying to 'impress yourself', ie do better than you did before. I also like to remember that such comparisons are usually between your every day existance and their 'highlight reel'.

Joe-Z 9y ago
>Its far more satisfying to 'impress yourself' I find that this is something that sometimes sort of just happens to me, when I get aware of something I'm doing better now than, say, a year before. But, I never really consciously decide to do that, because then I find it just doesn't work. Like the cliché of standing in front of a mirror and saying to yourself "today is gonna be a good day" (Has that ever worked for anybody? Where is this meme coming from?)
- brian-armstrong 9y ago
  Stuart Smalley, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Smalley#Catchphrases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Smalley#Catchphrases
- mseebach 9y ago
  It works, but no, it won't turn night into day. It's about making sure you take a moment to appreciate the good things you experience. It's about making an effort to not assume malice when there's a plausible positive or neutral explanation for someones behaviour. It's about the fact that if you smile at people and say good morning, they'll return the favour more often than if you frown and don't. It's about making peace with the things you can't change. It's about not dismissing this stuff as happy-clappy bullshit, but about giving you energy to address the things that actually matter, rather than just going around being angry at the world.
  - Joe-Z 9y ago
    Okay, I can see that. That's what I try to do too. Altough I see these thinking habits as more of a short-term happiness boost than a tool for feeling satisfied with my life (which I would categorize as a more longer-lasting feeling, independent of my normal up/down mood-cycles).

danielbarla 9y ago

In addition to what others have already said, noticing this is a step in a good direction. Having a clear idea of just how strange and arbitrary our emotions can be is a great antidote.

fossuser 9y ago

This is not unique to humans. Check out: https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg It takes a lot of effort to learn not to resent accomplishments of people you’re “competing” with even if they’re friends and you’re not directly competing with them. It’s a learned behavior to feel good for them instead. There’s probably a selected reason for this, but it’s possible to overcome it (or at least be aware of its affect). It’s better to frame life success on something else - like what you want to learn or the type of person you want to be.

Hendrikto 9y ago
I have this strange dichotomy where I am happy if my friends succeed, but I am also kind of happy if they don‘t. Seems like I learned to feel good for other people‘s accomplishments, but I haven‘t unlearned comparing myself to them, and feeling good if I accomplish something they do not.
- Sean1708 9y ago
  I suppose it's better than feeling unhappy if they do succeed and unhappy if they don't.

spyckie2 9y ago

I think this and many other problems are just too new. It's not that we can't cope - human beings have amazing mechanisms to adapt to harsh situations - but rather so many problems are new enough that there is little prior societal understanding and defense for it. When a problem is widespread enough to affect many members of society, the practices and solutions to that problem eventually enter the social vocabulary and become common knowledge. Social culture is filled with antibodies to past problems - college, seat belts, smoking, fitness - just to name a few things ingrained in society that passively guards our well being. It's when new problems that affect entire generations emerge too quickly, there's not yet good common advice for how to deal.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Oh the many ways in which one can make themselves unhappy. For me it's not about how much I earn, but the kind of things I get to do. The other day I've seen a trailer of a series on Netflix - Mars Generation, I think? I couldn't even finish it, because when I saw those kids doing the things I always wanted, it made me think about all similar realizations - that e.g. my university started doing things with rockets and satellites just after I graduated, that left and right I see cool spacetech opportunities offered to students only, etc. I'm having a hard time dealing with the fact I was just born few years too early. It's a stupid, irrational jealousy.

Tomis02 9y ago
It's not stupid and it's not irrational. What you're feeling is normal - the unfairness of other people given the chance to do what you would've liked to do. It's not their fault, but still.

tugberkk 9y ago

I'm sorry it is not about that topic in hand; but I just read 'BIG BUCKS' like Frank did in Scarface.

tmnvix 9y ago

"Every time my friends succeed, I die a little." - Gore Vidal

Spearchucker 9y ago

Age fixes that. Used to feel much the same. Now (approaching 50) I just couldn't give a shit anymore. A friend I've grown distant from over the last 4 years or so bought a 911 GT3 RS last year. And suddenly I hear from him. And I marvel at the waste. Purchases like that are meaningful on only two days - the day you buy it, and the day you sell it. I think a mid-20's me might've liked a car like that for the sex it could get me. Making more money than me is great. Really. If making more money than me is important to you I KNOW I'm having more fun than you are. Somehow, somewhere in the last 5 years or so I've become content. I scratch-build model cars now in my spare time, and that's where I compete - with myself. Crazy fulfilling.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
funnelsgun 9y ago
I'd argue that a 911 GT3 RS is not a waste. I would love to own a GT3, let alone a GT3 RS. Most GT3 RS owners are motorsport lovers, and use their GT3 RS for its true purpose. Motorsport and track events are also a great place to make new friends, as are organized road trips to incredible places in the world such as the PetrolHead tours.
- Spearchucker 9y ago
  I've done the motorsport thing. Drove a '79 M1 around the Nordschleife once. And yes, that experience has value to me, but knowing I did and another hasn't doesn't make me better, or them worse. It just... is. And I'm glad the M1 wasn't mine.
  - funnelsgun 9y ago
    I was at the Nurburgring this summer! I loved it so much I’m going to go back next summer. Of course, owners are entitled to do whatever they please with their cars - but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing to see a GT3 RS, or any other track car, spend it’s life in start stop traffic in London.
- 9y ago

k__ 9y ago

I often have it the other way around with a friend. Somehow only in the things he cares about. He has a car and a much better PC, still he envies my money.

coldtea 9y ago
Well, with your money he could buy an even better car and PC than he has!

bluGill 9y ago

When things like that happen to me I look at my 401k and other savings and remember that someday in the future I will get to enjoy things in life they will never be able to afford.

swat535 9y ago

This might be my inner Canadian speaking but in my experience, it is much easier to feel joy when a friend of mine succeeds than envy him. I feel much happier when people in my social circle are well off and living a great life. I have also found that helping those around me succeed, whether financially, or personally, usually improves my own quality of life in someway (not always of course). I also fully agree that one should only compare self to oneself. After all we are all unique IMHO happiness is truly achieved when shared :)

alashley 9y ago
> This might be my inner Canadian speaking but in my experience, it is much easier to feel joy when a friend of mine succeeds than envy him. In my personal experience, I'd say this is a very unique quality to have. Not all friends and family members can be like this.

smallnamespace 9y ago

> irrational and stupid Is it irrational and stupid? In a society at the limits of of its resources and stuck in a Malthusian trap, there is often zero-sum competition between members of the society. Until the modern period and real technological growth, most humans lived in societies that were approaching local research constraints. Famine was common. If your neighbor had a bit more, it's likely because you had a bit less. In that sort of a situation, learning that your peer makes twice as much as you thought is revealing quite a few things: e.g. you could have found a way to get paid much more and society is less equal or 'fair' than you thought.