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I love statistics, but it seems to me that studies on self-reported states of emotion are fatally flawed no matter how you do the math. In this case, that is to

I love statistics, but it seems to me that studies on self-reported states of emotion are fatally flawed no matter how you do the math. In this case, that is to say that just because the majority of people in a society reported neutrally on your study, does not mean that you can imply the negative. In fact, however, what it does mean is that you can imply nothing, not even that your sample study is "confronting" an "emotion deficit". This study, and others like it, are generally interesting, however, as they raise questions like: how do you quantify happiness? how do you quantify satisfaction? how do you quantify love? how do you quantify things that simply aren't currently quantifiable? Which brings up the reality, that if you cannot quantify such things for the individual, you surely cannot quantify them for an entire society of individuals? Or can you?

cdf 14y ago
As a Singaporean, I don't think we have an "emotional deficit". We just have greater risks when speaking up. For example, a lady working here was hounded out of Singapore because of a facebook post. The online lynching mob even included the Prime Minister. Another case, a cab driver casually mentioned off the record there was once, he earned as much as 7k SGD in a single month. The journalist wrote the article seemingly to suggest that he was bragging about earning 7k every single month. (By Singapore standards, 7k is pretty high income) The cab driver was hounded out of his job as a result. It's dangerous to speak up. There is no protection of free speech. So Singaporeans learn to play safe. Because we never know when a supposedly anonymous innocuous survey will end up quoting you by name. The outcome of the survey is a damning reflection of how illiberal Singapore is. But hey, dont go away, some say we have the most business friendly environment in the world.

cdf 14y ago

As a Singaporean, I don't think we have an "emotional deficit". We just have greater risks when speaking up. For example, a lady working here was hounded out of Singapore because of a facebook post. The online lynching mob even included the Prime Minister. Another case, a cab driver casually mentioned off the record there was once, he earned as much as 7k SGD in a single month. The journalist wrote the article seemingly to suggest that he was bragging about earning 7k every single month. (By Singapore standards, 7k is pretty high income) The cab driver was hounded out of his job as a result. It's dangerous to speak up. There is no protection of free speech. So Singaporeans learn to play safe. Because we never know when a supposedly anonymous innocuous survey will end up quoting you by name. The outcome of the survey is a damning reflection of how illiberal Singapore is. But hey, dont go away, some say we have the most business friendly environment in the world.