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What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy
- okket 7y agoSee also previous discussion about the paper from 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863 (31 comments)
- neonate 7y agoFrom PG about this article: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1134755140802633730 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1134755140802633730
- qznc 7y agoIs the motto of Y combinator still "Make something people want"? http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
- dredmorbius 7y agoThough with adtech, it's more "make people want something".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tlb 7y agoArticles about this usually focus on frivolous wants, like Facebook likes. But it's also true of more worthwhile wants. If you want to cure cancer, and eventually succeed, you won't be any happier after an initial rush. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be driven by such wants.
- alexwilde 7y agoI find this hard to believe. If you cure cancer, that's a gift that keeps on giving. Imagine knowing day-in and day-out your work was all worth it and you continually save N lives YoY.
- Apocryphon 7y agoAnd yet, it is a common criticism that Silicon Valley is focused on building cat photo sharing apps, or on demand services, or whatever is the current defining stereotypical trend, than tackling the “big problems”, such as cancer. So certainly our economic structure incentivizes frivolous wants, which make investors happy and founders wealthy.
- tlb 7y agoMany, many people in SV are working on cancer and other really valuable things. Progress is slow because it's hard, not because nobody works on it.
- Apocryphon 7y agoMythical Man-Month and all that, but progress would probably be a little less slow if more people and organizations are incentivized to work on the same problem. See the progress on self-driving vehicles.
- brokenmachine 7y ago>See the progress on self-driving vehicles. Self-driving vehicles are complete hype - so far from a reality it's ridiculous that people here still seem so bullish on them. Please show me a single vehicle that is anywhere close to being able to drive unassisted in all weather conditions and on any roads that a human would drive.
- Apocryphon 7y agoRegardless of their product viability, doubtless an immense amount of advancement has occurred in the last five years because of interest- economically driven- in the field. Imagine if similar incentives existed for other hard problems.
- 0815test 7y agoResearch actually suggests that memorable experiences do yield sustained happiness, whereas transient ones or simply material goods do not. A handful of Facebook likes would probably not make you very happy in the longer run, but having your cure for cancer reach top spot on HN just might.
- FabHK 7y agoIf I cured cancer (and I won't), I'd want an obituary in The Economist (at the apposite time), not make front page on HN.
- 0815test 7y agoAh, but would that obituary in The Economist make you happy? I suppose it depends on what exactly you mean by some "apposite" time!
- beenBoutIT 7y agoIRL if you cured cancer almost no one would believe you and it would take decades before the treatment gained enough anecdotal steam to get officially recognized and FDA approved.
- brokenmachine 7y ago>Research actually suggests that memorable experiences do yield sustained happiness I agree with this. I have pictures from our holidays as a screensaver, and I feel a small happiness bump when I see them and think about the experiences.
- danbolt 7y agoI’ve pursued some worthwhile wants in the past, and I was surprised about how much they satisfied me. I think deep down it wasn’t the things that I acquired that made me happier, but the effort I took into taking care of myself that made me feel comforted. Obviously, that’s likely not the case with every desire, but it’s something that has struck me in the past few years.
- dooglius 7y agoIf it's possible to desire things without happiness, what is the evolutionary rationale for happiness at all? Maybe what we call "happiness" is only one type of positive feedback among many of which we might be less aware.
- lordnacho 7y agoShort-term boosts to wellbeing might make sense in a short-term world where everything is scarce. If you don't reset to become back to normal, what impetus is there to find another meal?
- bobthechef 7y agoIf a person embraces an intellectually wimpy evolutionistic metaphysics versus merely evolution as such as a means of explaining e.g. the diversity of life, then none of this really has an answer as there is truly no up, down, right, wrong, etc. Evolutionistic metaphysics begins with the presupposition that everything is purposeless and meaningless and so precludes the possibility of happiness as even a real thing. However, if a person manages to finally free himself from that bogus, high school caliber metaphysics and recover telos, you will stand a chance of coming to understand happiness in at least eudaimonic terms, that is to say, as the same as completion.
- Bakary 7y agoCan you explain how to recover "telos"?
- cadence- 7y agoWe are unhappy with our wants, because we are being overpromised on how much happiness those wants will deliver. Advertising and politicians are probably the worst offenders here. We desire and pursue certain wants (big house, luxurious car, tropical vacation) only to later get disappointed with their quality and utility once we have them. Then we report in the form that we are unhappy because we don’t use the two extra bedrooms that cost extra to heat, that luxurious car costs fortune in insurance and fuel, and the tropical vacation turned out to be a nightmare with roaches, bedbugs and salmonella outbreak.
- behnamoh 7y agoI've always wondered whether we should pursue what we want or what we need. For a long time I had no definite answer, but then I realized pursuing what we need is more important. In fact, this comes in part from this understanding that there's no good or bad, rather there are things that make us happy and things that make us sad. These are not always consistent though. For example, we might get sad at something which later we find out was - based on rational and logical considerations - actually a good thing, or become happy at something which is in fact a bad thing. Our "wants" promise us "happiness", but the joy we get from that is most likely short-term. On the other hand, pursuing our "needs" brings about "good" things in our lives, the joy of which is more long-term. And while getting what we need doesn't necessarily makes us happy, not getting it does in fact make us sad. Two problems exist though: (1) while we think we know what we want, we might in fact have no clue as to what we really want, thus always follow wrong leads; (2) we can only know what we need after we have achieved it. It takes a lot of self-knowledge to really figure out "where we are supposed to be", "what we are supposed to do", and "when". The answers to these questions tell us what we actually "need". Example: a person with talents in music but interested in math (in which he/she is only mediocre) is better off pursuing music as that is what he/she needs to do. What he/she wants to do is however, math. You tell me: wouldn't pursuing a dead-end job in math bring about an interminable series of sadness where the person realizes he/she can never be among the top math geniuses?
- cgriswald 7y agoYou kind of touched on points of this video, although from a different direction. Daniel Khaneman talks about the experiencing self versus the remembering self, which is in charge, and how that relates to happiness. https://youtu.be/XgRlrBl-7Yg https://youtu.be/XgRlrBl-7Yg
- ksherlock 7y ago"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get".
- p1mrx 7y ago"I'm gonna soak up the sun ..."
- bubblewrap 7y agoI don't think economists really have such a narrow idea of utility. Usually it is applied in abstract models, where utility is predefined (like a lottery where you can win money, and the amount you win is used as the utility - no need to consider how happy it might make the theoretical player). For the real world, I think evolutionary aspects have to be taken into account. A single actor may not act rational, but in the long term, the actors making the rational choice will prevail by the power of evolution. So rational choices will be made in the long run, even if it may not even be deliberation of the actors. Also, don't forget that happiness research itself may also be wrong. I think the classic about people without children supposedly being less happy than people with children points in that direction. By the standard research methodology, watching Netflix on the couch all the time would probably make people the most happy.
- afpx 7y agoThe best you can do is inform people about known risks and benefits, as best as you can. For instance, I smoke, and I know that it’s bad, but I do it anyway because I know that I’ll enjoy life more than the years that I will lose.
- jniedrauer 7y agoI quit smoking several years ago and started putting in the work to repair my cardiovascular system. The overall improvement to my wellbeing and state of mind cannot be overstated. I gained far more than I lost. My only regret is not doing it a lot sooner.
- sbayeta 7y agoSame here
- serpix 7y agoyou have no idea how shit your body and mind feels because of smoking. Your baseline when smoking is way lower than when you have a healthy cardiovascular system. Imagine climbing 10 flights of stairs without going out of breath. Running 10km daily without it showing. Living past 65 without carrying an oxygen tank.
- Kiro 7y agoStill worth every puff. I don't want to climb stairs or run 10 km. I want to sit peacefully on my balcony and smoke.
- FabHK 7y ago> More egalitarian economists will tend to value the utility of the poor and disadvantaged more than the utility of the wealthy, but fundamentally it’s still about giving people what they desire. That's not true, I think. What egalitarian economists would argue is that an extra dollar for the poor and disadvantaged buys a lot more utility than an extra dollar for the wealthy, and therefore (because said economist values their utility equally) extra dollars should go to the poor and disadvantaged. (Though most economists shy away from interpersonal utility comparisons, which is what gives rise to the concept of pareto optimality.)
- temp129038 7y agoI wonder what the default emotion is of most other creatures, specifically other mammals? To me, happiness is just a signal, just like sadness, anger, etc. It's your body telling you something is "good" or "bad" but isn't necessarily a natural feeling to be had 24/7.
- emsal 7y agoGeneral life satisfaction (which is the statistic mentioned in the article, in the context of happiness levels before and after the deletion of Facebook) is distinctly different from the acute joy one feels in the heat of victory (or more cynically, after taking stimulant drugs). The default emotion could be relatively neutral, but the difference between happiness and sadness, in the "general life satisfaction" sense, is in the baseline.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoA satisfied animal is not a competitive one in the game of survival and natural selection. We are cursed to forever be unsatisfied because that's what it takes to survive.
- close04 7y agoAnd then there’s the fact than any feeling that persists for longer than a certain period becomes normality. So you are no longer happy because you become desensitized to the endorphins in your brain (or produce less) and go back to neutral. That’s when you need more. Since happiness can be traced back to chemicals in your brain you can see it just like any drug. You build up resistance and even if from the outside it looks like you have everything you might still be not happy. I remember asking myself these questions years ago when I read an article about some physically impaired people being just as happy as able bodied ones, and one guy who left the Beatles before they became huge also being perfectly happy and content. Probably more so than the rest of the Beatles :).
- Bakary 7y ago
- bobthechef 7y agoIf you want the wrong things, for the wrong reasons, to the wrong degree, etc, then duh, of course you'll be unhappy. We are the heirs of thousands of years of thought on the subject and yet we walk around oblivious to millennia of wisdom. WE know better, of course, because we came later. An obnoxious dogma of liberalism (as in Lockean philosophy, not as in liberal institutions -- a VERY important distinction as the latter does not require the former) seems to be that any desire is an axiomatically and unquestionable good always, with no reference to human nature and what human nature tells us is good. (I won't name the recent manifestations of the late stage liberal freak show.) Human nature is what allows us to determine whether a desire is disordered or not such a pica, pedophilia, or zoophilia, though as the full consequences of liberalism manifest, I would not be surprised if these will eventually be "discredited" as bigoted, narrow-minded, and hateful cultural and social constructions. Ideology, as always, is impervious and blind to reason, so I will no doubt be downvoted given how deeply the poison of Lockean thought has penetrated into our culture. When hedonism has possessed a man, there is not even the slightest willingness to consider the truth, and if he were to witness it, he would likely fail to recognize it because of how blinded he's become by the mindless pursuit of pleasure. If you want to learn something about happiness, we have to look to insights of the classical tradition and not the lunacy that seized the world not 20 minutes ago. Pieper, for example, has written an excellent book on the four cardinal virtues. He's very lucid and speaks directly to the understanding. That's just the beginning.
- seem_2211 7y agoYou're probably going to be very unpopular with your opinion, but I think you're on to something. The Old Testament has the verse "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"(Jeremiah 17:9). Basically the polar opposite of our modern society & every message we're sold. Christianity/ Atheism/ consumerism - whatever belief system you subscribe to has an arm that basically boils down to "do what makes you happy." I'm not trying to get down on our current generation. If this truth was summed up in the Bible (regardless of your thoughts on the book), it's clearly a deeper reflection of human behavior. Happiness is hard.
- cheerlessbog 7y agoI don't use social media, but I do sometimes wonder whether my iPhone has a net negative impact on my life. Has anyone tried downsizing to a flip phone for a few months to compare?
- Qw3r7 7y agoI often thought of switching from a Galaxy to a BlackBerry just to have a physical keyboard back with a smaller screen.
- namelosw 7y agoThis is probably somehow coded in human's mechanism. People's happiness and sadness are relative, and it's all dynamic. Most of those who won a really big lottery don't last happy as long as they thought. Most of those who lost their legs will accept the truth after a while and find it's bad but it's not all that bad. This makes some people keep pursuing higher goals, while some other people find to get out of the loop is to enjoy their life right now.
- WalterBright 7y agoGetting what you want is boring. The fun is in working to achieve it. For example, writing a check to get your dream car is boring. Designing and building your dream car out of parts is loads of fun.
- starchild_3001 7y ago"One of these things is Facebook, by far the world's largest social-networking site. In a recent paper, economists Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer and Matthew Gentzkow investigated how much money they had to pay Facebook users in order to get them to deactivate the Facebook app for one or two months. They found that the median amount was $100, and the average was $180 (the latter being larger because a few users really loved Facebook). This suggests that Facebook, which is free to use, generates a huge amount of utility — more than $370 billion a year in consumer surplus in the U.S. alone. This bolsters the argument of those who believe that free digital services have added a lot of unmeasured output to the global economy. But Allcott et al. also found that the people who deactivated Facebook as part of the experiment were happier afterward, reporting higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety. The change was modest but significant — equal to about 25 to 40 percent of the beneficial effect typically reported for psychotherapy. Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug — in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than the pursuit of happiness." Another possibility is that your analysis is completely illogical and therefore wrong. People who quit facebook are self-selected. Their experiences doesn't necessarily reflect those who remain on the platform.
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoMostly never.
- agumonkey 7y agoAbout happiness: I'm out of years of mental, physical, joblessness issues. I just took a newb car mechanic position. It was exhausting, sometimes problematic (difficult to mesh programmer precision fetishism with mechanics regular brute force approach)... but there's a deep bliss in forgetting what I/you want and just do things. The balance is subtle.
- cyberjunkie 7y agoSome things, very few things are genuinely wanted and we value them all along. The rest that follows, not so much. Wanting to want is the fun, not getting what you want. Once you have it, you want something else, then the pursuit of wanting it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mbrock 7y ago“Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug — in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than the pursuit of happiness.” This is a good point.
- PeterStuer 7y agoCompany A makes a product that truly solves a need, as in, buying or consuming its cure, you have no further need to consume it ever again. There is true utility, but there is no further marginal utility to be gained from subsequent consumption. For example: a company selling cookwear that is so good that its pots and pans are handed down the generations. Once you hae a set you nor the one that inherits from you will ever have to buy cookwear again. Long term these companies fail because the eat their own market. Company B makes a product that does not solve your need, but provides a mere temporary relief. If you want to keep your problem 'solved', you have to perpetually buy the relief. In the above cookwear example, sell pans that are 10 times cheaper than those of company A, but they only last for 2 years until they bend or crack, so you need to buy a new set of crappy pans every 2 years. Unlike A, company B does not usurp it's own market. They can in theory keep selling junk cookware forever. This is partly why we live in a world filled with crap that breaks all the time, but unfortunately there is even worse. Company C is a more nefarious type of 'B' company. It's products increase the problem at the same time they provide the temporary relief, thus increasing their own demand or making escaping the downward spiral harder and harder. We recognize and regulate against a few of these types of products, often fast acting ones (crack cocaine), but the vast majority can keep dodging regulation for a very long time (tobacco, alcohol, sugar, ...) Company D is the true champion of the neo-liberal market economy though. It provides a product with genuine utility, that doesn't necessarily have the slippery slope built into it, but creates it nevertheless through externalities. A typical example of this is a car. It provides undeniably great benefits to person buying the car (personal mobility), while at the same time impacting the lives of all in a slightly negative way (pollution, use of public space, noise, ...). Let's say in a small model world where everyone starts with a 'happiness score' of 0, that the car 'buyer' gets a solid +500 happiness points, while everyone gets a shared -1. Yes, we might feel a little worse at the start, but that -1 is easy to offset with a solid net +499 I get the moment I also buy that desirable car. It is not until much further down the line, when the cumulative unhappiness has reached levels that not even a +499 buy can rectify, that some enlightened soul can observe we might have been better of without cars altogether in terms of happiness, but even at the point where people would realize this, they individually only have the choice between buying and at least get a +499 added even though the overall happiness score will still be far under water and sinking, or personally forego the consumption and still be 499 happiness points worse off. Personal abstention doesn't solve anything, apart from maybe a slight moral feelgood, as it is the consumption of all others that creates the systemic misery. This is why 'vote with your wallet' is a pretty hollow, even cynical phrase, in these types of situations. Economists like to portray 'the market' as a fight among type A companies one-upping better 'solutions'. In reality it is the type B,C, and D companies that are systemically selected for long term, and that explains why we are consuming ourselves into perpetual unhappiness.
- another-dave 7y ago"Economists and other happiness researchers consistently find that longer commutes are associated with unhappiness. Yet people still pay quite a lot to live in far-flung exurbs." This feels like an over simplification — the article makes it sound like the individuals don't weigh the benefits correctly. Anecdotally know a few people in this position who do this because they have to get up earlier but their kids grow up beside woods & heaths rather than in suburbs/city. So you've people doing something which makes themselves unhappier because it makes their family happier (in theory) which they get happiness / satisfaction from.
- isacikgoz 7y agoDespite the fact that Bentham is the first name that comes into mind when speaking on utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill pushed the boundaries of it and actually addressed what utility is and how can it be measured. As article implies, the utility of a thing should be measured for each individual so that the person extract more happiness from it. I strongly suggest to read Mill’s utilitarianism if someone is looking more information about this topic.
- StacyC 7y agoAs I’ve gotten older I find that my wants are fewer, and the list of things I truly care about has gotten much shorter. I’m happy with what I have now and grateful for the basic things (family, health, work I enjoy). Consider making as many good experiences as you can, rather than accumulating more things.
- Bakary 7y agoThere's a passage from Existential Comics[0] that is relevant: >Utilitarianism, as described by philosophers such as Bentham, Mill, and Singer, is roughly the idea that morality should be based purely on what causes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In his novel, Notes From the Underground, Dostoyevsky made a strong objection to this style of ethics, imploring us to imagine a world where Utilitarianism as a project was finished. The perfect world was created and it was known what would make us the most happy. He said at this point, the human would rebel, and reject the system. He claimed that if there was a single value that was held most high - human freedom, then no moral system could be perfect, because it would rob us of that freedom. He claimed that if happiness was indeed the ultimate goal of life, then all of human history has been a mistake. That is to say, if you observe individual humans in history, they have seldom sought out happiness for themselves. They have instead sought out only what they sought out. What they desired was merely what they desired, and often it had nothing to do with happiness, be it art, ambition, conquest, to have children, or merely spite - what they wanted to do was what they wanted to do, and the further explanation of their desire making them "happy" was superfluous, and unrelated to what their desire to be free. [0] http://existentialcomics.com/comic/236 http://existentialcomics.com/comic/236