5 ms·

Happiness Is Two Scales

105 points by headalgorithm 4y ago

simonebrunozzi 4y ago
Bullshit. Two scales mean that they can be independent. You never experience: 1) Too much unhappiness and 2) Too much happiness Therefore, these are not two scales. As simple as that.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  Oh, you can experience both immense moments of joy in times of tragedy, and vice versa. Your child gets born during intense warfighting. You find your dog (which you thought had perished) again after a hurricane that devastated your home. Your partner dies during a phase of extraordinary success.
quintussss 4y ago
I love how the two top comments on this post are "It's more complicated" and "It's much simpler".
- BatteryMountain 4y ago
  It's all relative either way.
  - adnauseum 4y ago
    Including this statement?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Thats why we need domain driven design: First define “Happiness”…
tpoacher 4y ago
> Instead, happiness and unhappiness are two separate, independent scales. So, happiness behaves more like a fuzzy measure rather than like a probabilistic measure.
swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
This seems to fit in with my idea of general happiness, and actively enjoying oneself. Playing only video games, I can enjoy myself but my general happiness often suffers from lack of variety. Sometimes, when I'm working on something hard, I might not be particularly enjoying myself, but I can be overall happier while being given a challenge.
zwieback 4y ago
You're saying happiness and unhappiness exist on independent scales, should we plot them in an x-y graph then? Upper right quadrant: overexcitement, lower left quadrant: boredom. Not sure about the off-diagonals.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  Boredom is low unhappiness and low happiness, Euphoria is low unhappiness and high happiness. Depression is high unhappiness and low happiness I can't really come up with what it would mean to be high unhappiness and high happiness. Manic, maybe? It sounds like a very confused situation.
  - karambahh 4y ago
    Your idea is really interesting. I rarely (if ever) comment on my mental health online, but I can totally relate to a X-Y quadrant as you describe. Many mental health professional debut their appointment with a dreaded question "how are you feeling today?". If I had this diagram with me, it would save time and be way more descriptive of my state of mind. As for the high unhappiness/high unhappiness quadrant: I'm not manic myself but know close ones who are. I think it fits. Thanks for opening my mind about this.
    - bluefirebrand 4y ago
      I can't claim credit here. I was just following on the idea that the original commenter floated.
  - Nevermark 4y ago
    The high unhappiness, high happiness quadrant is formally referred to as “my life”. I am happiest when I stretch past my limits, which not un-coincidentally means I am also always hitting my limits. Would not change anything. Might change my mind at any time though. (I am not manic, maybe an incurable optimist.)
  - samatman 4y ago
    Sometimes people lose a parent and have their first kid in the same year. It's like that.
drewcoo 4y ago
Newton simplified physics with his model of gravity. Before that, we had Aristotle's physics, with its opposing forces of gravity and levity. https://www.isoul.org/gravitation-and-levitation-theories/ https://www.isoul.org/gravitation-and-levitation-theories/ This model of happiness seems overly complicated and burdensome. But funny.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory
Supermancho 4y ago
It's likely that there are many more axes than 2.
solarmist 4y ago
I think it's simpler than this. Happiness is an emotion which is an acute phenomenon. It is impossible to sustain just like anger or surprise. Satisfaction is what I think most people mean by "happiness." And when you start thinking of it that way there are very actionable things you can do to improve this directly.
- respondo2134 4y ago
  I definitely think that it's relative, or as in Vanilla Sky "The sweet just ain't as sweet without the sour". I consciously recognize (and even appreciate?) the bad times because the best times in my life depend on comparing them to the rougher periods. It's the exceptions that make me most joyful, not some constant state of happy.
  - solarmist 4y ago
    Sure, but I mean it literally. For things like this there is a lot of conflation of words like happy, joy, satisfied, etc. But the natural state of the brain is neutral, so it can react when needed. To create an emotion the brain alters brain chemistry as a way to send signals which we interpret as emotions. It would be problematic if they could just be switched on without turning off.
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  I think this is basically similar to the ideas of Stoicism. Happiness itself is fleeting, it will come and go, you can't really aim for it, we are awful predictors of it and as you state it's an emotion so it comes an goes. However we can strive to achieve a certain comfort, or tranquillity from knowing that we did our best, that we did what we could and what we should and gain a certain satisfaction from that. That is much more rounded, it's more achievable and stops you from being at whim to the randomness of the world and your own moods.
aaron695 4y ago
fillskills 4y ago
So sticks and carrots?
closedloop129 4y ago
Why are we still guessing how our emotions work? With 5 billion people online, there could be instant feedback on all models and hypotheses. What is needed to coordinate humans to figure out how humans work?
- toto444 4y ago
  For one Facebook owns most of the data. At soe point they tried testing some psychological hypothesis but everyone thought it was unethical. I haven't read this article but if you need a pointer https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
angarg12 4y ago
With something as fuzzy as "happiness" there can be many scales. This is one of the beefs that I have with the "love your job" culture. People reduce job satisfaction to a single line, where you either love it, hate it, or something in between. I like to think of job satisfaction across many dimensions. Maybe you love your team, but commute is killing you. Projects are interesting, but salary could be higher. To make it more complicated, there dimensions and yourself change over time: projects start and end, colleagues join and leave, you might get raises or promotions. Rating things in a simple happy/unhappy, love/hate scale is rarely useful.
xcambar 4y ago
For many feelings, the linear measure is often ineffective, we can grant that to the author to highlight this fact. In my experience (read: not a specialist, anecdotal data point), I relate to the 2-scale described here and more: the lack. Typically, the lack of [feeling] or its opposite is as much a sign as its abundance. To exemplify, being (un)happy is what one might call a positive action: you DO feel (un)happy. In that sense, not feeling any hapiness or unhappiness is putting yourself in an emotional void, which calls for action in a much different way that treating happiness VS unhappiness. --- Edit: to conclude: Hence, the scale I'd like to propose is, for some definition of happiness and probably many other feelings: * measure of lack, presence, abundance of effective emotions * measure of wanted feeling * measure of unwanted feeling
paskozdilar 4y ago
Interesting take, but still boils down to the same: satisfaction = happiness - unhappiness. What's more interesting to me is how it seems that "satisfaction" is equal to the first derivative of life quality - if your life quality sucks, and gets a little better, you feel satisfied; if your life quality rocks, and gets a little worse, you feel dissatisfied.
heikkilevanto 4y ago
I don't remember where I learned this: "It isn't enough to be happy. You have to be content".
- cainxinth 4y ago
  And yet I’ve found I’m willing to settle for being content for long periods even if it rarely rises to the level of actual happiness. Content is an under-appreciated state of being.
simonswords82 4y ago
This is the type of content I keep coming back to HN for. Very insightful.
jheriko 4y ago
the richer insight here is into the bias present in arrangements of binary classifiers imo. this article is dripping with it.

105 points by headalgorithm 4y ago

Bullshit. Two scales mean that they can be independent. You never experience: 1) Too much unhappiness and 2) Too much happiness Therefore, these are not two scales. As simple as that.

DocTomoe 4y ago
Oh, you can experience both immense moments of joy in times of tragedy, and vice versa. Your child gets born during intense warfighting. You find your dog (which you thought had perished) again after a hurricane that devastated your home. Your partner dies during a phase of extraordinary success.

quintussss 4y ago

I love how the two top comments on this post are "It's more complicated" and "It's much simpler".

BatteryMountain 4y ago
It's all relative either way.
- adnauseum 4y ago
  Including this statement?
quickthrower2 4y ago
Thats why we need domain driven design: First define “Happiness”…

tpoacher 4y ago

> Instead, happiness and unhappiness are two separate, independent scales. So, happiness behaves more like a fuzzy measure rather than like a probabilistic measure.

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago

This seems to fit in with my idea of general happiness, and actively enjoying oneself. Playing only video games, I can enjoy myself but my general happiness often suffers from lack of variety. Sometimes, when I'm working on something hard, I might not be particularly enjoying myself, but I can be overall happier while being given a challenge.

zwieback 4y ago

You're saying happiness and unhappiness exist on independent scales, should we plot them in an x-y graph then? Upper right quadrant: overexcitement, lower left quadrant: boredom. Not sure about the off-diagonals.

bluefirebrand 4y ago
Boredom is low unhappiness and low happiness, Euphoria is low unhappiness and high happiness. Depression is high unhappiness and low happiness I can't really come up with what it would mean to be high unhappiness and high happiness. Manic, maybe? It sounds like a very confused situation.
- karambahh 4y ago
  Your idea is really interesting. I rarely (if ever) comment on my mental health online, but I can totally relate to a X-Y quadrant as you describe. Many mental health professional debut their appointment with a dreaded question "how are you feeling today?". If I had this diagram with me, it would save time and be way more descriptive of my state of mind. As for the high unhappiness/high unhappiness quadrant: I'm not manic myself but know close ones who are. I think it fits. Thanks for opening my mind about this.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    I can't claim credit here. I was just following on the idea that the original commenter floated.
- Nevermark 4y ago
  The high unhappiness, high happiness quadrant is formally referred to as “my life”. I am happiest when I stretch past my limits, which not un-coincidentally means I am also always hitting my limits. Would not change anything. Might change my mind at any time though. (I am not manic, maybe an incurable optimist.)
- samatman 4y ago
  Sometimes people lose a parent and have their first kid in the same year. It's like that.

drewcoo 4y ago

Newton simplified physics with his model of gravity. Before that, we had Aristotle's physics, with its opposing forces of gravity and levity. https://www.isoul.org/gravitation-and-levitation-theories/ https://www.isoul.org/gravitation-and-levitation-theories/ This model of happiness seems overly complicated and burdensome. But funny.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory

Supermancho 4y ago

It's likely that there are many more axes than 2.

solarmist 4y ago

I think it's simpler than this. Happiness is an emotion which is an acute phenomenon. It is impossible to sustain just like anger or surprise. Satisfaction is what I think most people mean by "happiness." And when you start thinking of it that way there are very actionable things you can do to improve this directly.

respondo2134 4y ago
I definitely think that it's relative, or as in Vanilla Sky "The sweet just ain't as sweet without the sour". I consciously recognize (and even appreciate?) the bad times because the best times in my life depend on comparing them to the rougher periods. It's the exceptions that make me most joyful, not some constant state of happy.
- solarmist 4y ago
  Sure, but I mean it literally. For things like this there is a lot of conflation of words like happy, joy, satisfied, etc. But the natural state of the brain is neutral, so it can react when needed. To create an emotion the brain alters brain chemistry as a way to send signals which we interpret as emotions. It would be problematic if they could just be switched on without turning off.
ChildOfChaos 4y ago
I think this is basically similar to the ideas of Stoicism. Happiness itself is fleeting, it will come and go, you can't really aim for it, we are awful predictors of it and as you state it's an emotion so it comes an goes. However we can strive to achieve a certain comfort, or tranquillity from knowing that we did our best, that we did what we could and what we should and gain a certain satisfaction from that. That is much more rounded, it's more achievable and stops you from being at whim to the randomness of the world and your own moods.

aaron695 4y ago

fillskills 4y ago

So sticks and carrots?

closedloop129 4y ago

Why are we still guessing how our emotions work? With 5 billion people online, there could be instant feedback on all models and hypotheses. What is needed to coordinate humans to figure out how humans work?

toto444 4y ago
For one Facebook owns most of the data. At soe point they tried testing some psychological hypothesis but everyone thought it was unethical. I haven't read this article but if you need a pointer https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

angarg12 4y ago

With something as fuzzy as "happiness" there can be many scales. This is one of the beefs that I have with the "love your job" culture. People reduce job satisfaction to a single line, where you either love it, hate it, or something in between. I like to think of job satisfaction across many dimensions. Maybe you love your team, but commute is killing you. Projects are interesting, but salary could be higher. To make it more complicated, there dimensions and yourself change over time: projects start and end, colleagues join and leave, you might get raises or promotions. Rating things in a simple happy/unhappy, love/hate scale is rarely useful.

xcambar 4y ago

For many feelings, the linear measure is often ineffective, we can grant that to the author to highlight this fact. In my experience (read: not a specialist, anecdotal data point), I relate to the 2-scale described here and more: the lack. Typically, the lack of [feeling] or its opposite is as much a sign as its abundance. To exemplify, being (un)happy is what one might call a positive action: you DO feel (un)happy. In that sense, not feeling any hapiness or unhappiness is putting yourself in an emotional void, which calls for action in a much different way that treating happiness VS unhappiness. --- Edit: to conclude: Hence, the scale I'd like to propose is, for some definition of happiness and probably many other feelings: * measure of lack, presence, abundance of effective emotions * measure of wanted feeling * measure of unwanted feeling

paskozdilar 4y ago

Interesting take, but still boils down to the same: satisfaction = happiness - unhappiness. What's more interesting to me is how it seems that "satisfaction" is equal to the first derivative of life quality - if your life quality sucks, and gets a little better, you feel satisfied; if your life quality rocks, and gets a little worse, you feel dissatisfied.

heikkilevanto 4y ago

I don't remember where I learned this: "It isn't enough to be happy. You have to be content".

cainxinth 4y ago
And yet I’ve found I’m willing to settle for being content for long periods even if it rarely rises to the level of actual happiness. Content is an under-appreciated state of being.

simonswords82 4y ago

This is the type of content I keep coming back to HN for. Very insightful.

jheriko 4y ago

the richer insight here is into the bias present in arrangements of binary classifiers imo. this article is dripping with it.