26 ms·

How to Be Happy

282 points by adamzerner 12y ago

pkorzeniewski 12y ago
I've read many articles and books on this subject and not a single one of them had any effect on my life. It's usually just a list of things that - according to the author (and every author of course has different opinion) - will make you happy. It's bullshit, there is no "golden solution" for everyone. Reading such articles will make you even more unhappy, because now you've the whole list of things and you feel like if you don't achieve them all, you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.
- ams6110 12y ago
  Author himself identifies this problem in the concluding paragraph: seeking happiness as an end might be counterproductive
- dominotw 12y ago
  What can one do to a live happy life is a very hard question to answer for anyone. Life is fundamentally absurd, we are yet to find what this whole madness is all about. Most people choose ( or fall into) an ideology to give meaning and structure life. To cite an example of an ideology the family man - fulfillment in raising a child, having a family, bunch of friends to hang out with, a job to sponser all this. This is the default ideology of most people and societies built around this. There are many others , 'the religious man', 'the scholar/intellectual', 'social worker' , 'the rational man who votes' etc. You have to find an ideology that you find comfortable brainwashing yourself with, doesn't matter which one as long as the delusion is strong enough that you can convince yourself that you are living your life to reach a certain goal or a purpose.
- elbear 12y ago
  Did you merely read them or did you also apply what was said in those readings? Have you also consulted a specialist?
- wslh 12y ago
  > It's bullshit, there is no "golden solution" for everyone. The science of happiness (not their philosophy) is new and it is in a prehistoric stage. Think about the history of chemistry and the alchemist adventures! The post doesn't invalidate your opinion, just reading and article doesn't make you happy except for a few enlightened ones. But, knowing the correlation using a lot of data can help you in this search.
- fernly 12y ago
  The posted article acknowledges that happiness is in large part a genetic trait, and in other large part the result of life history (parenting, health, etc).
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >The posted article acknowledges that happiness is in large part a genetic trait Citation needed. Preferably not a citation that can be countered by another, opposite, citation.
- jasode 12y ago
  Maybe the closest writing to fit your view is Daniel Gilbert[1]. Basically, humans have a biological "set point" for happiness and it's different for everyone. It is not affected by winning the lottery, or getting paralyzed from a car accident, or doing meta-analysis on what happiness is (such as reading self-help books about achieving happiness.) Those events may affect happiness in the short term but not in the long term. People will eventually gravitate back to their predisposed set point of happiness. If I agree with the above, I can set aside the quest for ultimate measurement of absolute happiness (e.g. Solon's "Count no man happy until he be dead."[2]) . However, I can still do things that affect relative happiness. When I stopped consulting for boring ERP software, my quality-of-life definitely improved. Again, I won't know if I'm ultimately "happy" until I'm lying on my deathbed. Nevertheless, it feels like I got a little victory from changes like that. [1]http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427 http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/... http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon
  - pkorzeniewski 12y ago
    I agree you can do things that affect your relative happiness, but the key here is that it's YOU who must know what the things are - everyone have different needs and you can't fit all in one model. Some prefer to have interesting, but lower paying job, some doesn't care as long as it pays for their hobbies - and both can be happy, but switch their lives and both will be miserable. So if one would give advice to the other on how to be happy, it wouldn't help a bit, because they've different perspective on life.
- badman_ting 12y ago
  It's really not bullshit, I think. The stuff about fear rings totally true to me, it aligns perfectly with my experiences. But, I know that being on the other side of it, it can sound like a bunch of hokum. (That's part of the reason why people keep living that way - the logic is pretty watertight.) I've read books about it too, and not been helped that much beyond perhaps gaining some insight, or setting expectations of what happiness is like. But that doesn't invalidate the information in the books, it tells you that merely reading about happiness does not make it so. You can read all the books about how to be a great basketball player, but you won't improve until you actually get on a court and shoot some shots.
- 3pt14159 12y ago
  I'm not saying that the author is right or wrong, but your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove that reading about how to be happy will make you unhappy. Science has consistently shown that good health and relationships correlate to happiness. It has even been shown that there is a causal effect (ie, if you start exercising you start feeling better). Someone unaware of that fact may read a post like this and decide to exercise for 30 mins everyday.
- mercer 12y ago
  I've found that the main reason why so many of these articles and books don't have an effect on my life is that I read them and then forget to apply what they suggest. Sure, it's possible that many of them suggest approaches to 'happiness' that do not apply to me, but I really don't know because I never took the time to actually spend, say, 30 days committing to their advice. And my impression is that this seems to be the case for most people who bother with 'self-improvement'. (That said, I'm not disagreeing with you. Finding what makes specifically you happy is important.)
shurcooL 12y ago
8. Find your purpose and live it. One benefit of religion may be that it gives people a sense of meaning and purpose. Without a magical deity to give you purpose, though, you'll have to find out for yourself what drives you. It may take a while to find it though, and you may have to dip your hands and mind into many fields. But once you find a path that strongly motivates you and fulfills you, take it. (Of course, you might not find one purpose but many.) Having a strong sense of meaning and purpose has a wide range of positive effects.41 The 'find a purpose' recommendation also offers an illustration of how methods may differ in importance for people. 'Find a purpose' is not always emphasized in happiness literature, but for my own brain chemistry I suspect that finding motivating purposes has made more difference in my life than anything else on this list. I think that's the biggest factor of my happiness. I have a long-term open source project that I believe in and I work on it in all my spare time. Little by little, it's getting closer to one day being very useful in many ways.
- tabrischen 12y ago
  That's exciting, very happy for you. Can you share more about this?
  - shurcooL 12y ago
    Thanks. :) It's an experimental software development tool, largely inspired by Bret Victor's talks. It's similar to projects like Light Table, Zed editor, but it's nowhere near as complete and focuses on a single programming language (Go). I worked on it full time for a year after finishing my master's degree, culminating in a first place winning demo submission to the LIVE 2013 contest [1]. By then, I ran out of money so I got a full time job and continue to work on Conception in my limited free time. By now, I'm working on a pure Go implementation of Conception [2], which is a lot more advanced in some ways, but is still needs a lot more work before it's actually usable and helpful to other people. Someday, when the time is right, I want to get back into it full time, because it really requires a lot of work. [1] http://liveprogramming.github.io/liveblog/2013/04/live-programming-contest-winners/ http://liveprogramming.github.io/liveblog/2013/04/live-progr... [2] https://github.com/shurcooL/Conception-go/commits/master https://github.com/shurcooL/Conception-go/commits/master
rodrigoavie 12y ago
Great article. I think that the main point is always being busy doing what you like, namely, in the "flow" the author describes.
- davidrusu 12y ago
  Flow has high highs but it doesn't produce a lasting contentedness that the author is talking about
gaelow 12y ago
My problem may be laziness. I couldn't bring myself to read more than half of such a long article, so I guess I'll just stay moderately unhappy.
- chippy 12y ago
  The bit about procrastination was in the first half of the article :)
  - gaelow 12y ago
    Who said I read the first half?
    - gaelow 12y ago
      (LPT: Always jump straight to the conclusions part of the article. Then, maybe, read the parts that may interest you. The Internet is an infinite sea of data; If you stop swimming or dive too deep, you'll drown on it.)
  - lozf 12y ago
    I'd procrastinate more if I wasn't so lethargic.
hliyan 12y ago
I've reduced it to a series of equations: Happiness = Perceived Actual Life / Expected Life --- (1) where, Perceived Actual Life = Perception * Actual Life ----- (2) and in most cases, Expected Life ∝ Perceived Life of Others ------------- (3) where, Perceived Life of Others = Perception * Others' Actual Life -- (4) and finally, Actual Life ∝ (1 / Happiness) * Skill * Circumstance - (5) The most success I had was in breaking equation (3), and then in upward adjusting Perception in (2). But (5) is the kicker -- it implies that your lack of happiness feeds back into other people's lack of happiness, creating a loop. As long as it holds, everyone will try to one-up each other in trying to improve their lives. EDIT: corrected error in (1)
- manifoldlife 12y ago
  Hmm, equation 5 bugs me. I like the model that being less happy can drag down other people, but this directly implies that being more happy drags your own life down, which I feel is antithetical to the definition of happiness. I think this stuff is really cool though, and I really like where you're going! Do you have proposed units for the quantities in your equations?
  - Mathnerd314 12y ago
    I think it's easier to see the relations once you substitute everything in. I combined the perception terms instead of cancelling since presumably they're different, but here you go: Happiness = Perception * (1 / Happiness) * Skill * Circumstance / Others' Actual Life Happiness^2 = Perception * Skill * Circumstance / Others' Actual Life Happiness = +-sqrt(Perception * Skill * Circumstance / Others' Actual Life) I'm not certain about the negative root there; maybe that's depression? Otherwise, looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Square_root_0_25.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Square_root_0_25.svg, it seems reasonable; improving one of perception/skill/circumstance if it's near-zero will improve your happiness drastically, but it's a relatively slow-growing function so improving happiness after that has diminishing returns. Also, as you mention we never defined the terms. I believe all of these are generally measured on self-administered surveys with "rate X" scales, and so are just percentages with no units. Finally, the terms don't have any obvious correlations with the post, so I just stuck in the things that were mentioned that seemed relevant: * Happiness - see eqn., you can't affect this directly * Skill - conscientiousness, self-esteem, optimism, feelings of purpose and fulfillment * Others' Actual Life - income and wealth * Circumstance - genes (health?), extroversion, "flow" * Perception - paying attention to your situation/actions/feelings and in particular adjusting your estimates of success/failure chance to match reality (humans deal very badly with probabilities) - includes "agreeableness" (understanding of others), "memory" (perceptions of self being happy), and "mindfulness" (perceptions of world)
Deivuh 12y ago
As someone was currently suffering of depression, this is going to help me. Nice article and linked resources.
- chippy 12y ago
  Interesting use of varying tenses in your grammar. Is English your first language?
  - Deivuh 12y ago
    No, it's spanish. Just spotted one mistake, would you care to correct what I wrote? BTW, there's no way to edit my comment here on HN right?
kstop 12y ago
Pretty sure the last thing the world needs is Less Wrong cross-pollinating with Hacker News.
- lolpep8 12y ago
  You've got it backwards. In the Glorious Hacker News Golden Age that people sometimes speak of, Hacker News tended to gravitate towards pure-market solutions, deny the existence or relevance of social issues that don't affect white middle class men (i.e. everything but ageism in tech), and gave weight to Eliezer Yudkowsky's Bayesian equation-driven morality, and everything else that looked and sounded scientific (imagine how many old-HN readers would be guzzling Soylent now). The HN readership had lots in common with LessWrong, but they were diluted and displaced by people who don't share their same, ahem, qualities.
- barry-cotter 12y ago
  Really? Why? What exactly is wrong with lesswrong? Please be specific.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Singularity idiots?
    - woodchuck64 12y ago
      Is there an argument to be made why artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence is not a problem for the human race?
      - consz 12y ago
        null hypothesis.
        davidrusu 12y ago
        We all ready have a well defined rigorous AGI[0] that would have god like intelligence. There are some approximations that played pacman [1] without knowing anything specific about pacman itself. i.e. it learned how to play by itself. [0] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/AIXI http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/AIXI [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsMHtmGDKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsMHtmGDKE
__Joker 12y ago
I hardly agree with "Develop the skills and habits associated with extroversion". Why I need to be comfortable with social company if my predisposed nature and comfortableness is to be alone ?
- adamzerner 12y ago
  Because you have a lot to gain by doing so. Humans are capable of deriving a lot of happiness from social matters, so there's a large opportunity cost to being alone. That said, it obviously depends on the person's situation. I don't think the advice is good for everyone. But it's probably good for most. Edit: I found http://www.succeedsocially.com/allarticles http://www.succeedsocially.com/allarticles to be really insightful and useful.
  - ansible 12y ago
    There is also quite a difference between not choosing to socialize, vs. feeling depressed because you are not able to socialize successfully.
    - SonicSoul 12y ago
      not choosing to socialize may seem like a fine choice and not a source of depression in itself. But I think what the parent tried to say is that there is opportunity cost associated with such a decision. I need good amounts of solitude each week, which makes me an introvert i guess, but if there are no good interactions with other humans at all, my happiness dips noticeably. Having an option to meet with another human (and having a good interaction every so often) is a boost to the feeling of security, which I believe can help the feeling of happiness. For example If i do something awesome (or really dumb), I need to tell someone, and it needs to be someone that actually cares. Or the experience is not as good / might as well not have happened.
  - ams6110 12y ago
    If you are a man, there is one thing that will solve the extroversion problem and that is to be able to talk about sports. It is the default subject of conversation for men who don't know each other, and if you can't talk about sports then you are awkwardly trying to find something to talk about 80% of the time.
Jweb_Guru 12y ago
Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of dust from the eye of every other person on Earth, and that the most important thing we could possibly be doing right now is devoting all of our time developing a mathematical model of a "safe AI." The site frequently dallies with discredited ideas like Drexlerian nanobots and some on the site take absurd concepts like "Roko's Basilisk" [1] seriously. All of this is not to discredit this specific article. And there are lots of very intelligent posters there. But I tend to take everything I read there with a massive grain of salt. [1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
- lucisferre 12y ago
  It's funny but this article is actually the strongest evidence of cult behaviour. Teaching you how to be "happy" is pretty much the initial selling point of almost every cult out there. Just walk by any Scientology building. Also from the wiki you linked [1] > Some people familiar with the LessWrong memeplex have suffered serious psychological distress after contemplating basilisk-like ideas — even when they're fairly sure intellectually that it's a silly problem.[5] The notion is taken sufficiently seriously by some LessWrong posters that they try to work out how to erase evidence of themselves so a future AI can't reconstruct a copy of them to torture Wow either that article is hyperbolizing this or... wow. [1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#The_LessWrong_reaction http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#The_LessWrong... [5] (reference from the quote) http://lesswrong.com/lw/fq3/open_thread_december_115_2012/80v8#20121230 http://lesswrong.com/lw/fq3/open_thread_december_115_2012/80...
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > It's funny but this article is actually the strongest evidence of cult behaviour. Teaching you how to be "happy" is pretty much the initial selling point of almost every cult out there. This is nonsense. It's an article posted to a curated community blog by some guy who happens to like reading tons of psychology papers and wanted to do some research into the state of scientific understanding of happiness. Is Wikipedia selling a cult too now[0]? [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness
anaphor 12y ago
I recommend giving The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell (yes, he wrote what amounts to a self-help book) a read. Despite being outdated by a long while, it's still pretty relevant and useful imo. https://archive.org/details/TheConquestOfHappiness https://archive.org/details/TheConquestOfHappiness
- tim333 12y ago
  I tried reading that and found it fairly bad. Even the opening sentence "Animals are happy so long as they have health and enough to eat" is bollocks. I rather liked the "Happiness Hypothesis" by Haidt although it's more of an academic look at the area than a self help book. Also "Philosophy for Life: And other dangerous situations" is good on the philosophical side.
npsimons 12y ago
Extroversion is among the best predictors of happiness, Well of course it is! No one ever meets the shy happy people because they never go out!
- mansr 12y ago
  There is also, as the author mentions, a correlation between religiosity and happiness. Still, "start going to church" is not on the list of things to do. I'll hazard a guess that the author is not religious and thus doesn't consider it relevant. While I don't personally believe this a worthy pursuit, it does show the arbitrariness of the selection. EDIT: Point 8 does touch on religion but does not (directly) endorse it.
  - rquantz 12y ago
    This is on Less Wrong, a website devoted to rationality. You'll notice several times in the article he is clearly addressing a rationality-focused audience. For instance: Without a magical deity to give you purpose, though, you'll have to find out for yourself what drives you. He's writing for atheists. Telling an atheist "in order to be happy you need to get religion" is like telling a recovering alcoholic "in order to fall asleep you need to have a few drinks."
    - angersock 12y ago
      That's one of the entire problems with atheism: without a higher power to give your life purpose, it can be very difficult to suffer through yet another day on this earth full of such suffering and sorrow. Nihilism has a similar issue. It's icky.
      - rquantz 12y ago
        That's one of the problems with religiosity: you can't imagine a way to find meaning in the world without fooling yourself.
      - josephlord 12y ago
amrit_b 12y ago
I felt happy when I decided not to read the article :)
- jodrellblank 12y ago
  I felt happy when I downvoted your casual dismissal :) [Edit: that's not true, I felt happy before I downvoted, when I imagined downvoting.]
mansr 12y ago
Most self-help advice boils down to the author saying "be more like me." This is no exception.
- asdfologist 12y ago
  Your point? That's true of most advice in general. It's common sense that if something worked for one person, then perhaps it could work for another.
  - elbear 12y ago
    The difference is that this person actually backs his advice with some studies.
- woodchuck64 12y ago
  This is the author saying be like me and become aware of the science of happiness. He provides a huge number of references to peer-reviewed studies. This is decidedly NOT like most self-help advice.
davidtanner 12y ago
I was a lot happier when I stopped reading LessWrong. I'm not even trying to be (overly) snarky - I really did used to read LW and I'm very glad I stopped as it was one of the many small things dragging down my well being.
- deleted 12y ago
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- onetimeusename 12y ago
  Would you care to elaborate on this? I have my own criticisms of LW and without mentioning what they are, I want to see if other people's match up with mine.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    I see LW as part of the cult of reason - under risk of strawmanning, it's the idea that pretty much everything subject to perfect logical deduction from first principles. It's important to study and understand human biases and it can be helpful in overcoming many struggles since most of the time, you're your own worst enemy, but the philosophy that you're inherently flawed and you should put up a constant effort to be "less wrong" is a recipe for disaster IMO. Absolutely, take time every now and then to reflect on life and whether any biases and assumptions about the world is impairing your wellbeing and happiness and whether it might be worth changing that -- but in everyday life, listen to your impulses, intuition and feelings. Don't be blind, don't be stupid, but also don't constantly second-guess yourself. I should totally write a self help book. Or at least make some inspirational Facebook cover photos.
    - derefr 12y ago
      > but in everyday life, listen to your impulses, intuition and feelings The idea, if I understand it correctly, is that those are the things that are supposed to end up "less wrong." You're not supposed to be consciously thinking all the time about how your thinking is broken; you're supposed to practice a few tricks for a while, internalize them, and then your impulses/intuition/feelings will be (less) broken.
awakened 12y ago
"The only correct view is the absence of all views." - thich nhat hanh We are unhappy when we assign reasons to people's actions or words. When we think that others say or do things because they are "out to get me". That is a view and that is an incorrect view that will lead to all sorts of unhappiness and discontent in your life. Get rid of all of your views. Some things just happen. There is no grand plan. "Do you want to be right, or happy?" - thich nhat hanh Don't correct people or argue with them. It leads to unhappiness. Especially don't do this in front of others. It will only cause confrontation that hurts you just as much as the people you are correcting. Even if you are being wrongly accused, just be silent. There will be a better time later to correct the situation and set the record straight. This is much needed in corporations in America that have contentious meetings. People interrupt each other, openly demean and correct each other. Sit silently in these meetings and stay above it all. Everyone will notice and you'll be much happier and content. There is much more we can learn from Eastern philosophy. When things cause stress and unhappiness in your life, examine them, be mindful of your words and deeds toward others, live only in the present and you'll forever be happy.
- adamzerner 12y ago
  You're making a lot of absolute statements. I sense that a lot of these things depend on the situation, rather than are always true. Reversing stupidity isn't intelligence.
  - goldenkey 12y ago
    I doubt he will reply to your comment given that the philosophy makes sense merely by practice. I do think keeping out of mud is a good idea, because mud sticks.
- eludwig 12y ago
  >>"The only correct view is the absence of all views." - thich nhat hanh That is a pretty strong view! ;D >>live only in the present and you'll forever be happy Live only in the present and you will be happy, sad, angry, in love, sleepy, hungry etc, etc. Happiness is just a thing that happens, like all things. All things happen in the present. Can you experience a "past event" in the present?
borplk 12y ago
I think more or less everything boils down to this: 1. Good health: when you are sick, nothing else matters 2. Money: it solves almost any solvable problem, and in case it doesn't, it helps 3. Family/Friends/Relationships/Love/Intimacy
jqm 12y ago
My dog is probably one of the happiest creatures I know. But he can't get his own dinner and I have to take him out to poop. If everyone was happy all the time we would probably still live in caves because there wouldn't have been the struggle that brings us to where we are. This in my opinion may be why religion correlates with happiness. For the very same reason lobotomized people might be happy. Do you want to be happy or do you want to know how the world really works and what is certainly going to happen? But... the dark cynicism of reality aside, I think happiness probably results very simply from good health, physical activity, strong social connections and a feeling of being important or succeeding. It's good to be happy sometimes. But I still think being happy all the time might not be the best thing for us personally, nor for us as a species. IMHOP.
- davidrusu 12y ago
  Cynicism is not the driving force of innovation, optimism is. It is possible to be happy and rational.
  - goldenkey 12y ago
    Maybe not so relevant but I imagine that most crazy scientists are happy and that leads to optimism in their ideas despite outside attacks on their research. I suppose happiness can be somewhat like armor against slander
  - jqm 12y ago
    I don't disagree with either statement. But if there isn't a problem in the first place there can't be a solution. And if you don't see the problem because you are busy "being positive" then you can't work on it. I look at it like this... motion comes from polarity. Yin and Yang. Male and Female. Happiness and Misery. Just my opinion. And yes... I find the cult of constant happiness a bit annoying and superficial. I do think it is good for people to be happy __most of the time... I'm happy most of the time, but I'm not happy all the time and neither is anyone else. Nor should they be unless they are mental patients or animals. That's my point.
  - deleted 12y ago
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dominotw 12y ago
Can someone tell me how this 'cult of happiness' started in western culture. The obsession with happiness is so pervasive and absurd that people are depressed because they are not happy 24x7 not because of a personal tragedy. Why is some vaguely defined happiness sold as some holy grail that must be achieved at all costs. There are billion dollar industries built around selling happiness ( fashion industry, fitness industry, education industry and a million others), and yet, and yet most of happiness we are sold is a distant dream for the most of us. Why? . Why do we live in a constant conflict both within ourselves and conflict with the outer world. Do you want to live your life in this constant conflict ? Most happiness peddling misses the important intricate relationship between happiness and pain/anxiety how they are the same feeling and pursuing one means pursuing the other. And yet most people are fooled into believing that we can somehow chase happiness while avoiding pain/anxiety. Even people who are very logical in every other parts of life buy into this absurdity. Does this have to do anything with rise of western industrial power when marketing changed from 'buy this because you need it' to 'buy this because it will make you happy' [1] 1. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
- chippy 12y ago
  "the pursuit of happiness" is right there in the US Declaration of Independence. The country holds that the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right.
  - carlosdp 12y ago
    That's a straw man though. The "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration is just fancy phrasing for what was originally the "right to own property". It was changed by Jefferson before the Declaration was finished because of some philosophical points from John Locke [1]. [1] http://hnn.us/article/46460 http://hnn.us/article/46460
    - chippy 12y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean to use a logical fallacy...I just got it from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_o... Edits: Actually, reading the article fuller, this makes it even MORE interesting. Buying things, protecting products and property has always been tied up with happiness and the declaration. Fascinating! "life, liberty ... and the possession of outward things"
NoahTheDuke 12y ago
I actually found the Be Happier [0] article to be a better source of actionable and researched-backed advice. I put a bunch of the In A Nutshell sentences into my general Anki [1] deck, and it's had a measurable effect on my overall happiness. [0]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/ [1]: http://ankisrs.net/ http://ankisrs.net/
- nerfhammer 12y ago
  Re: the anki deck, what you do put on the front of the card vs. the back of the card?
  - NoahTheDuke 12y ago
    I know it's not recommended, but I made a single page Note Type, and just put them on there: <b>Be Happier</b><div> </div>Interpersonal: Give the people around you opportunities to be generous. Ask them for favors. When it comes up, I quietly read it out loud to myself. I've found that seeing these cards often enough keeps their concepts on my mind, so when I go out with friends and someone offers to buy me a beer, I accept it and thank them, instead of refusing even to the point of awkwardness (as is my natural inclination).
noname123 12y ago
I'm happiest when I'm seeking out and feeding off all sorts of misery, schadenfreude of others' failures, absurdity, ennui, existential guilt, jealousy of others' success, fear of missing of out, fear of growing old, sexual frustration, impotence of metaphorical and of the limpy kind, the haze and alcohol/drug induced dependency, anxiety of status. I get angry and anxious reading my Facebook updates about weekend adventures that I wasn't part of, LinkedIn updates about undeserving acquaintances climbing the ladder higher than where I'm. I proceed to then practice mindful meditation to be fully conscious of my human nature to practice the dual art of sour grapes (e.g., "Going to law school given all of the articles I read is not worth it nowadays") and rationalization (e.g., "They may be richer, but I'm happier... as a maker."). Then I realize what a worthless person I'm but self-worthless transforms into the joy of masochism. I overeat, overdrink, stay up late, sleep in, skip out of work, act out, make inappropriate propositions to friends or strangers when inebriated. Nursing the bad hangover the morning after, I pat myself in the back for getting free therapy sessions from unwilling acquaintances and for my courage to let myself go to practice authenticity.
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- deleted 12y ago
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- lilsunnybee 12y ago
  Behavior like the type you describe could easily be self destructive and hugely detrimental. > make inappropriate propositions to friends or strangers when inebriated this is really really not good
- Centigonal 12y ago
  I am not a psychiatrist, but you may be suffering from some form of mental illness. Please consider talking to a mental wellness professional about how you feel emotions. Nobody is going to try and make you change who you are, but almost anyone would benefit from understanding how their own mind works better.
pajju 12y ago
To be happy 1. Be like Water. Keep your mind like Water. Stateless. Formless. Keep flowing like water. Don't settle & Stop. http://soopara.com/being-water-be-water-my-friend-be-water-be-water/ http://soopara.com/being-water-be-water-my-friend-be-water-b... 2. Fall in love with yourself more than anyone else. Fall in love with your Passion, it already knows everything about you. 3. Try to Know Everything about your Previous life(life's). Thus, know the purpose of your life & connect those dots. Get closer to your niche & Life purpose. 4. Surround yourself with Right people. 5. Be in a place(Create that place) for yourself, where you got more freedom & autonomy to think and live. 6. Finally to be happy, be happy, create Good, great & positive thoughts always. What we think, we become. Its that simple! Our thoughts = Key Life Formula.
jeffreyrogers 12y ago
At the time in my life when I stopped reading LessWrong I became remarkably happier within a week. I attribute this to two reasons: 1. LessWrong's focus on optimizing your life is so great that whenever I failed at something or didn't uphold something I said I would do I felt bad about it. 2. One thing that makes me happy (and I think most others would agree they're happiest when this occurs as well) is accomplishment. I like the feeling of working on a goal and having that lead to tangible results, whether that means something I've created or something like lifting more weight in the gym. By actually making a change to how I act and seeing the results of that change in the world I developed a lot of confidence (I was formerly very shy and uncomfortable with myself despite having a lot of things going for me). I want to come back to the first point briefly as well. At the time I was reading LW it often felt like I was being productive. I'd think to myself "oh I just need to read this article on motivation and acrasia (the LW term for procrastination), and I'll never fail to do what I planned to do again. This caused me to spend my time preparing to do things that I never ended up doing, and it also set me up to feel angry with myself when I inevitably failed. One thing that helped me a lot was accepting that on top of everything we humans have going for us we're really just animals, and we get upset, or jealous, or sad, or angry, just like any other animal. So rather than try to eliminate these negative emotions from my life I came to accept them as normal and try to structure my life so that they occur as infrequently as possible. I've found a few ways of doing this that work for me, and I can post some of what's worked if anyone's interested. I still have bad days or bad moments, but when I do I accept it as normal and try to see what I can learn from it to lessen the impact next time, rather than trying to over-optimize the life of an unpredictable, fallible human making most of the important decisions in his life based on emotion (hint: that's all of us). The allure of LW is that we're perfectly rational or that we can at least make ourselves that we through sheer force of will. For better or for worse (I think for better) that's not the case.
- bitexploder 12y ago
  I think another key factor with a lot of modern unhappiness is that, as the article notes, money does not correlate to happiness as long as you are above the poverty line. We have lost the art of teaching people how to have a philosophy of life. We teach people how to have a craft. We teach basic morals. In religious households you may even be taught a pretty comprehensive "life philosophy", but it is often underpinned by many practices that defy rationality, and I think, lead many to unhappiness. A few years ago I stumbled on some pretty interesting reading about Stoicism and I have since read much of ancient greek philosophy and a bit of more modern stuff like Kant. It still sort of blows my mind just how insightful the ancient greek philosophers were about human nature. One of the key principles of Stoicism that has an analogue or similar set of features in many other philosophies is that it is essentially not things that happen to us that cause us pain/grief/sadness/unhappiness but our judgement and reaction to those things. It seems a little trite in a short post like this, and I can't sum up something as complex as an entire school of philosophical thought, but it has worked well for me. I have been in conversations where life philosophies like Stoicism and other related ancient greek philosophies get dismissed out of hand. Only to have a conversation wind over our current empirical approach to happiness. This less wrong article is /exactly/ what I call this empirical approach to happiness. Study all of the correlates, take all the best modern science about which behaviors yield the most happiness and which yield the least happiness and optimize accordingly. Yet, 1800+ years ago, ancient philosophers identified many of the same principles articles like this are encouraging us to apply to our lives. What is missing from this article, and I think that can often cause many people to fail at sticking with a plan, is a coherent and binding strategy for all of this disparate "strategies for happiness". The ancient philosophies are not perfect, us moderns have learned a thing or two since Socrates and Epictetus, but their insights on the human condition are too keen to ignore. We know a lot more about genetics, and I have witnessed the ravages of deep nearly incurable depression on my family. Even the ancient stoics knew of depression and how it could destroy rationality of the most adept philosophers. Outside of these parameters, I would argue, strongly, that we could all live with a little more Socrates and Epictetus in our life and a little less religious extremism and modern consumerism. And this brings me to my main point, without a rational, modern, and scientifically palatable life philosophy for how to think and feel about /everything/ it is very easy to put yourself into negative emotional states. I have found with a system to judge and evaluate emotions, and a keen understanding of the basic tendencies of my nature, I don't need a lot of empirical scientific knowledge to stay happy, though it does inform my approach. When I read your post it made me think of myself and my old strategy of decreasing pain/bad moments and increasing good moments where good feelings are more likely. Now, I proceed in a manner as I see fit and I simply accept that much of my feelings are up to me and that jealously, sadness, and anger are just my judgement or feelings about something. I have also, often found, that when properly analyzed, I am not truly sad about a situation, merely that my judgements were wrong. I have definitely embraced many stoic principles into my life, and when I continue to work at maintaining and improving my understanding and ability to apply the principles I have adopted, I stay very even keeled, neither greatly happy or greatly sad. Content. I try to stick close to my baseline and take joy in every day life (since most of life is every day life) :)
frbr 12y ago
"Happiness is subjective and relative" True story: When I was a kid, I was very happy with the rattling performance of my old Schneider PC. The sun was shining bright that day during the lunch break on the schoolyard, when a notoriously rich kid approached me with a grin on his face: "So you have a PC at home, huh? Want to see a real one?". A couple hours later we walked to his mansion. I took a seat in front of his PC. It looked new, and great. The monitor was very large. Very impressive. And then he turned it on. "It's a Pentium!". And he went on bragging about it. When I came back home and turned my PC on to continue working on my website, I was more aware than ever that my PC was slow. I knew it sucked, and from that moment on it depressed me. A couple years later I got a fast Dell. I was happy for a while. Until I got used to it. Morale: Sometimes, not knowing what can make you happy means you stay happy.
aytekin 12y ago
Here is a more actionable list: http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-make-yourself-happier http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-m...
lilsunnybee 12y ago
> 1. If you suffer from serious illness, depression, anxiety, paranoia, schizophrenia, or other serious problems, seek professional help first. Here's how. Link is broken. :-( Also nowhere in the list of happiness suggestions are volunteering and helping others to be found. Says to practice gratitude by appreciating all the good things you have, but never to actually help those less fortunate than you. The message is happiness is easy, as long as you aren't living below the poverty line or dealing with major problems in your life. Well plenty of people are dealing with both and could really use your help. Helping others might fulfill the gratitude and 'meaningful job' portions of this vanity list too.
halfcat 12y ago
The author mostly described the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. See "A Guide To The Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-and-how-can-it-turn-your-life-to-solid-gold/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-a...
tim333 12y ago
I tried actively increasing my happiness by reading up the on self help / academic stuff with moderate success. I probably managed to go from well below average (based on some Seligman tests) to a bit above. I kind of had a goal to get to the top 10% which I don't think I've really hit but onwards anyway...

282 points by adamzerner 12y ago

I've read many articles and books on this subject and not a single one of them had any effect on my life. It's usually just a list of things that - according to the author (and every author of course has different opinion) - will make you happy. It's bullshit, there is no "golden solution" for everyone. Reading such articles will make you even more unhappy, because now you've the whole list of things and you feel like if you don't achieve them all, you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.

ams6110 12y ago
Author himself identifies this problem in the concluding paragraph: seeking happiness as an end might be counterproductive
dominotw 12y ago
What can one do to a live happy life is a very hard question to answer for anyone. Life is fundamentally absurd, we are yet to find what this whole madness is all about. Most people choose ( or fall into) an ideology to give meaning and structure life. To cite an example of an ideology the family man - fulfillment in raising a child, having a family, bunch of friends to hang out with, a job to sponser all this. This is the default ideology of most people and societies built around this. There are many others , 'the religious man', 'the scholar/intellectual', 'social worker' , 'the rational man who votes' etc. You have to find an ideology that you find comfortable brainwashing yourself with, doesn't matter which one as long as the delusion is strong enough that you can convince yourself that you are living your life to reach a certain goal or a purpose.
elbear 12y ago
Did you merely read them or did you also apply what was said in those readings? Have you also consulted a specialist?
wslh 12y ago
> It's bullshit, there is no "golden solution" for everyone. The science of happiness (not their philosophy) is new and it is in a prehistoric stage. Think about the history of chemistry and the alchemist adventures! The post doesn't invalidate your opinion, just reading and article doesn't make you happy except for a few enlightened ones. But, knowing the correlation using a lot of data can help you in this search.
fernly 12y ago
The posted article acknowledges that happiness is in large part a genetic trait, and in other large part the result of life history (parenting, health, etc).
- coldtea 12y ago
  >The posted article acknowledges that happiness is in large part a genetic trait Citation needed. Preferably not a citation that can be countered by another, opposite, citation.
jasode 12y ago
Maybe the closest writing to fit your view is Daniel Gilbert[1]. Basically, humans have a biological "set point" for happiness and it's different for everyone. It is not affected by winning the lottery, or getting paralyzed from a car accident, or doing meta-analysis on what happiness is (such as reading self-help books about achieving happiness.) Those events may affect happiness in the short term but not in the long term. People will eventually gravitate back to their predisposed set point of happiness. If I agree with the above, I can set aside the quest for ultimate measurement of absolute happiness (e.g. Solon's "Count no man happy until he be dead."[2]) . However, I can still do things that affect relative happiness. When I stopped consulting for boring ERP software, my quality-of-life definitely improved. Again, I won't know if I'm ultimately "happy" until I'm lying on my deathbed. Nevertheless, it feels like I got a little victory from changes like that. [1]http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427 http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/... http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon
- pkorzeniewski 12y ago
  I agree you can do things that affect your relative happiness, but the key here is that it's YOU who must know what the things are - everyone have different needs and you can't fit all in one model. Some prefer to have interesting, but lower paying job, some doesn't care as long as it pays for their hobbies - and both can be happy, but switch their lives and both will be miserable. So if one would give advice to the other on how to be happy, it wouldn't help a bit, because they've different perspective on life.
badman_ting 12y ago
It's really not bullshit, I think. The stuff about fear rings totally true to me, it aligns perfectly with my experiences. But, I know that being on the other side of it, it can sound like a bunch of hokum. (That's part of the reason why people keep living that way - the logic is pretty watertight.) I've read books about it too, and not been helped that much beyond perhaps gaining some insight, or setting expectations of what happiness is like. But that doesn't invalidate the information in the books, it tells you that merely reading about happiness does not make it so. You can read all the books about how to be a great basketball player, but you won't improve until you actually get on a court and shoot some shots.
3pt14159 12y ago
I'm not saying that the author is right or wrong, but your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove that reading about how to be happy will make you unhappy. Science has consistently shown that good health and relationships correlate to happiness. It has even been shown that there is a causal effect (ie, if you start exercising you start feeling better). Someone unaware of that fact may read a post like this and decide to exercise for 30 mins everyday.
mercer 12y ago
I've found that the main reason why so many of these articles and books don't have an effect on my life is that I read them and then forget to apply what they suggest. Sure, it's possible that many of them suggest approaches to 'happiness' that do not apply to me, but I really don't know because I never took the time to actually spend, say, 30 days committing to their advice. And my impression is that this seems to be the case for most people who bother with 'self-improvement'. (That said, I'm not disagreeing with you. Finding what makes specifically you happy is important.)

shurcooL 12y ago

8. Find your purpose and live it. One benefit of religion may be that it gives people a sense of meaning and purpose. Without a magical deity to give you purpose, though, you'll have to find out for yourself what drives you. It may take a while to find it though, and you may have to dip your hands and mind into many fields. But once you find a path that strongly motivates you and fulfills you, take it. (Of course, you might not find one purpose but many.) Having a strong sense of meaning and purpose has a wide range of positive effects.41 The 'find a purpose' recommendation also offers an illustration of how methods may differ in importance for people. 'Find a purpose' is not always emphasized in happiness literature, but for my own brain chemistry I suspect that finding motivating purposes has made more difference in my life than anything else on this list. I think that's the biggest factor of my happiness. I have a long-term open source project that I believe in and I work on it in all my spare time. Little by little, it's getting closer to one day being very useful in many ways.

tabrischen 12y ago
That's exciting, very happy for you. Can you share more about this?
- shurcooL 12y ago
  Thanks. :) It's an experimental software development tool, largely inspired by Bret Victor's talks. It's similar to projects like Light Table, Zed editor, but it's nowhere near as complete and focuses on a single programming language (Go). I worked on it full time for a year after finishing my master's degree, culminating in a first place winning demo submission to the LIVE 2013 contest [1]. By then, I ran out of money so I got a full time job and continue to work on Conception in my limited free time. By now, I'm working on a pure Go implementation of Conception [2], which is a lot more advanced in some ways, but is still needs a lot more work before it's actually usable and helpful to other people. Someday, when the time is right, I want to get back into it full time, because it really requires a lot of work. [1] http://liveprogramming.github.io/liveblog/2013/04/live-programming-contest-winners/ http://liveprogramming.github.io/liveblog/2013/04/live-progr... [2] https://github.com/shurcooL/Conception-go/commits/master https://github.com/shurcooL/Conception-go/commits/master

rodrigoavie 12y ago

Great article. I think that the main point is always being busy doing what you like, namely, in the "flow" the author describes.

davidrusu 12y ago
Flow has high highs but it doesn't produce a lasting contentedness that the author is talking about

gaelow 12y ago

My problem may be laziness. I couldn't bring myself to read more than half of such a long article, so I guess I'll just stay moderately unhappy.

chippy 12y ago
The bit about procrastination was in the first half of the article :)
- gaelow 12y ago
  Who said I read the first half?
  - gaelow 12y ago
    (LPT: Always jump straight to the conclusions part of the article. Then, maybe, read the parts that may interest you. The Internet is an infinite sea of data; If you stop swimming or dive too deep, you'll drown on it.)
- lozf 12y ago
  I'd procrastinate more if I wasn't so lethargic.

hliyan 12y ago

I've reduced it to a series of equations: Happiness = Perceived Actual Life / Expected Life --- (1) where, Perceived Actual Life = Perception * Actual Life ----- (2) and in most cases, Expected Life ∝ Perceived Life of Others ------------- (3) where, Perceived Life of Others = Perception * Others' Actual Life -- (4) and finally, Actual Life ∝ (1 / Happiness) * Skill * Circumstance - (5) The most success I had was in breaking equation (3), and then in upward adjusting Perception in (2). But (5) is the kicker -- it implies that your lack of happiness feeds back into other people's lack of happiness, creating a loop. As long as it holds, everyone will try to one-up each other in trying to improve their lives. EDIT: corrected error in (1)

manifoldlife 12y ago
Hmm, equation 5 bugs me. I like the model that being less happy can drag down other people, but this directly implies that being more happy drags your own life down, which I feel is antithetical to the definition of happiness. I think this stuff is really cool though, and I really like where you're going! Do you have proposed units for the quantities in your equations?
- Mathnerd314 12y ago
  I think it's easier to see the relations once you substitute everything in. I combined the perception terms instead of cancelling since presumably they're different, but here you go: Happiness = Perception * (1 / Happiness) * Skill * Circumstance / Others' Actual Life Happiness^2 = Perception * Skill * Circumstance / Others' Actual Life Happiness = +-sqrt(Perception * Skill * Circumstance / Others' Actual Life) I'm not certain about the negative root there; maybe that's depression? Otherwise, looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Square_root_0_25.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Square_root_0_25.svg, it seems reasonable; improving one of perception/skill/circumstance if it's near-zero will improve your happiness drastically, but it's a relatively slow-growing function so improving happiness after that has diminishing returns. Also, as you mention we never defined the terms. I believe all of these are generally measured on self-administered surveys with "rate X" scales, and so are just percentages with no units. Finally, the terms don't have any obvious correlations with the post, so I just stuck in the things that were mentioned that seemed relevant: * Happiness - see eqn., you can't affect this directly * Skill - conscientiousness, self-esteem, optimism, feelings of purpose and fulfillment * Others' Actual Life - income and wealth * Circumstance - genes (health?), extroversion, "flow" * Perception - paying attention to your situation/actions/feelings and in particular adjusting your estimates of success/failure chance to match reality (humans deal very badly with probabilities) - includes "agreeableness" (understanding of others), "memory" (perceptions of self being happy), and "mindfulness" (perceptions of world)

Deivuh 12y ago

As someone was currently suffering of depression, this is going to help me. Nice article and linked resources.

chippy 12y ago
Interesting use of varying tenses in your grammar. Is English your first language?
- Deivuh 12y ago
  No, it's spanish. Just spotted one mistake, would you care to correct what I wrote? BTW, there's no way to edit my comment here on HN right?

kstop 12y ago

Pretty sure the last thing the world needs is Less Wrong cross-pollinating with Hacker News.

lolpep8 12y ago
You've got it backwards. In the Glorious Hacker News Golden Age that people sometimes speak of, Hacker News tended to gravitate towards pure-market solutions, deny the existence or relevance of social issues that don't affect white middle class men (i.e. everything but ageism in tech), and gave weight to Eliezer Yudkowsky's Bayesian equation-driven morality, and everything else that looked and sounded scientific (imagine how many old-HN readers would be guzzling Soylent now). The HN readership had lots in common with LessWrong, but they were diluted and displaced by people who don't share their same, ahem, qualities.
barry-cotter 12y ago
Really? Why? What exactly is wrong with lesswrong? Please be specific.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Singularity idiots?
  - woodchuck64 12y ago
    Is there an argument to be made why artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence is not a problem for the human race?
    - consz 12y ago
      null hypothesis.
      - davidrusu 12y ago
        We all ready have a well defined rigorous AGI[0] that would have god like intelligence. There are some approximations that played pacman [1] without knowing anything specific about pacman itself. i.e. it learned how to play by itself. [0] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/AIXI http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/AIXI [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsMHtmGDKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsMHtmGDKE

__Joker 12y ago

I hardly agree with "Develop the skills and habits associated with extroversion". Why I need to be comfortable with social company if my predisposed nature and comfortableness is to be alone ?

adamzerner 12y ago
Because you have a lot to gain by doing so. Humans are capable of deriving a lot of happiness from social matters, so there's a large opportunity cost to being alone. That said, it obviously depends on the person's situation. I don't think the advice is good for everyone. But it's probably good for most. Edit: I found http://www.succeedsocially.com/allarticles http://www.succeedsocially.com/allarticles to be really insightful and useful.
- ansible 12y ago
  There is also quite a difference between not choosing to socialize, vs. feeling depressed because you are not able to socialize successfully.
  - SonicSoul 12y ago
    not choosing to socialize may seem like a fine choice and not a source of depression in itself. But I think what the parent tried to say is that there is opportunity cost associated with such a decision. I need good amounts of solitude each week, which makes me an introvert i guess, but if there are no good interactions with other humans at all, my happiness dips noticeably. Having an option to meet with another human (and having a good interaction every so often) is a boost to the feeling of security, which I believe can help the feeling of happiness. For example If i do something awesome (or really dumb), I need to tell someone, and it needs to be someone that actually cares. Or the experience is not as good / might as well not have happened.
- ams6110 12y ago
  If you are a man, there is one thing that will solve the extroversion problem and that is to be able to talk about sports. It is the default subject of conversation for men who don't know each other, and if you can't talk about sports then you are awkwardly trying to find something to talk about 80% of the time.

Jweb_Guru 12y ago

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of dust from the eye of every other person on Earth, and that the most important thing we could possibly be doing right now is devoting all of our time developing a mathematical model of a "safe AI." The site frequently dallies with discredited ideas like Drexlerian nanobots and some on the site take absurd concepts like "Roko's Basilisk" [1] seriously. All of this is not to discredit this specific article. And there are lots of very intelligent posters there. But I tend to take everything I read there with a massive grain of salt. [1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

lucisferre 12y ago
It's funny but this article is actually the strongest evidence of cult behaviour. Teaching you how to be "happy" is pretty much the initial selling point of almost every cult out there. Just walk by any Scientology building. Also from the wiki you linked [1] > Some people familiar with the LessWrong memeplex have suffered serious psychological distress after contemplating basilisk-like ideas — even when they're fairly sure intellectually that it's a silly problem.[5] The notion is taken sufficiently seriously by some LessWrong posters that they try to work out how to erase evidence of themselves so a future AI can't reconstruct a copy of them to torture Wow either that article is hyperbolizing this or... wow. [1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#The_LessWrong_reaction http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#The_LessWrong... [5] (reference from the quote) http://lesswrong.com/lw/fq3/open_thread_december_115_2012/80v8#20121230 http://lesswrong.com/lw/fq3/open_thread_december_115_2012/80...
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > It's funny but this article is actually the strongest evidence of cult behaviour. Teaching you how to be "happy" is pretty much the initial selling point of almost every cult out there. This is nonsense. It's an article posted to a curated community blog by some guy who happens to like reading tons of psychology papers and wanted to do some research into the state of scientific understanding of happiness. Is Wikipedia selling a cult too now[0]? [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness

anaphor 12y ago

I recommend giving The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell (yes, he wrote what amounts to a self-help book) a read. Despite being outdated by a long while, it's still pretty relevant and useful imo. https://archive.org/details/TheConquestOfHappiness https://archive.org/details/TheConquestOfHappiness

tim333 12y ago
I tried reading that and found it fairly bad. Even the opening sentence "Animals are happy so long as they have health and enough to eat" is bollocks. I rather liked the "Happiness Hypothesis" by Haidt although it's more of an academic look at the area than a self help book. Also "Philosophy for Life: And other dangerous situations" is good on the philosophical side.

npsimons 12y ago

Extroversion is among the best predictors of happiness, Well of course it is! No one ever meets the shy happy people because they never go out!

mansr 12y ago
There is also, as the author mentions, a correlation between religiosity and happiness. Still, "start going to church" is not on the list of things to do. I'll hazard a guess that the author is not religious and thus doesn't consider it relevant. While I don't personally believe this a worthy pursuit, it does show the arbitrariness of the selection. EDIT: Point 8 does touch on religion but does not (directly) endorse it.
- rquantz 12y ago
  This is on Less Wrong, a website devoted to rationality. You'll notice several times in the article he is clearly addressing a rationality-focused audience. For instance: Without a magical deity to give you purpose, though, you'll have to find out for yourself what drives you. He's writing for atheists. Telling an atheist "in order to be happy you need to get religion" is like telling a recovering alcoholic "in order to fall asleep you need to have a few drinks."
  - angersock 12y ago
    That's one of the entire problems with atheism: without a higher power to give your life purpose, it can be very difficult to suffer through yet another day on this earth full of such suffering and sorrow. Nihilism has a similar issue. It's icky.
    - rquantz 12y ago
      That's one of the problems with religiosity: you can't imagine a way to find meaning in the world without fooling yourself.
    - josephlord 12y ago

amrit_b 12y ago

I felt happy when I decided not to read the article :)

jodrellblank 12y ago
I felt happy when I downvoted your casual dismissal :) [Edit: that's not true, I felt happy before I downvoted, when I imagined downvoting.]

mansr 12y ago

Most self-help advice boils down to the author saying "be more like me." This is no exception.

asdfologist 12y ago
Your point? That's true of most advice in general. It's common sense that if something worked for one person, then perhaps it could work for another.
- elbear 12y ago
  The difference is that this person actually backs his advice with some studies.
woodchuck64 12y ago
This is the author saying be like me and become aware of the science of happiness. He provides a huge number of references to peer-reviewed studies. This is decidedly NOT like most self-help advice.

davidtanner 12y ago

I was a lot happier when I stopped reading LessWrong. I'm not even trying to be (overly) snarky - I really did used to read LW and I'm very glad I stopped as it was one of the many small things dragging down my well being.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
onetimeusename 12y ago
Would you care to elaborate on this? I have my own criticisms of LW and without mentioning what they are, I want to see if other people's match up with mine.
- mseebach 12y ago
  I see LW as part of the cult of reason - under risk of strawmanning, it's the idea that pretty much everything subject to perfect logical deduction from first principles. It's important to study and understand human biases and it can be helpful in overcoming many struggles since most of the time, you're your own worst enemy, but the philosophy that you're inherently flawed and you should put up a constant effort to be "less wrong" is a recipe for disaster IMO. Absolutely, take time every now and then to reflect on life and whether any biases and assumptions about the world is impairing your wellbeing and happiness and whether it might be worth changing that -- but in everyday life, listen to your impulses, intuition and feelings. Don't be blind, don't be stupid, but also don't constantly second-guess yourself. I should totally write a self help book. Or at least make some inspirational Facebook cover photos.
  - derefr 12y ago
    > but in everyday life, listen to your impulses, intuition and feelings The idea, if I understand it correctly, is that those are the things that are supposed to end up "less wrong." You're not supposed to be consciously thinking all the time about how your thinking is broken; you're supposed to practice a few tricks for a while, internalize them, and then your impulses/intuition/feelings will be (less) broken.

awakened 12y ago

"The only correct view is the absence of all views." - thich nhat hanh We are unhappy when we assign reasons to people's actions or words. When we think that others say or do things because they are "out to get me". That is a view and that is an incorrect view that will lead to all sorts of unhappiness and discontent in your life. Get rid of all of your views. Some things just happen. There is no grand plan. "Do you want to be right, or happy?" - thich nhat hanh Don't correct people or argue with them. It leads to unhappiness. Especially don't do this in front of others. It will only cause confrontation that hurts you just as much as the people you are correcting. Even if you are being wrongly accused, just be silent. There will be a better time later to correct the situation and set the record straight. This is much needed in corporations in America that have contentious meetings. People interrupt each other, openly demean and correct each other. Sit silently in these meetings and stay above it all. Everyone will notice and you'll be much happier and content. There is much more we can learn from Eastern philosophy. When things cause stress and unhappiness in your life, examine them, be mindful of your words and deeds toward others, live only in the present and you'll forever be happy.

adamzerner 12y ago
You're making a lot of absolute statements. I sense that a lot of these things depend on the situation, rather than are always true. Reversing stupidity isn't intelligence.
- goldenkey 12y ago
  I doubt he will reply to your comment given that the philosophy makes sense merely by practice. I do think keeping out of mud is a good idea, because mud sticks.
eludwig 12y ago
>>"The only correct view is the absence of all views." - thich nhat hanh That is a pretty strong view! ;D >>live only in the present and you'll forever be happy Live only in the present and you will be happy, sad, angry, in love, sleepy, hungry etc, etc. Happiness is just a thing that happens, like all things. All things happen in the present. Can you experience a "past event" in the present?

borplk 12y ago

I think more or less everything boils down to this: 1. Good health: when you are sick, nothing else matters 2. Money: it solves almost any solvable problem, and in case it doesn't, it helps 3. Family/Friends/Relationships/Love/Intimacy

jqm 12y ago

My dog is probably one of the happiest creatures I know. But he can't get his own dinner and I have to take him out to poop. If everyone was happy all the time we would probably still live in caves because there wouldn't have been the struggle that brings us to where we are. This in my opinion may be why religion correlates with happiness. For the very same reason lobotomized people might be happy. Do you want to be happy or do you want to know how the world really works and what is certainly going to happen? But... the dark cynicism of reality aside, I think happiness probably results very simply from good health, physical activity, strong social connections and a feeling of being important or succeeding. It's good to be happy sometimes. But I still think being happy all the time might not be the best thing for us personally, nor for us as a species. IMHOP.

davidrusu 12y ago
Cynicism is not the driving force of innovation, optimism is. It is possible to be happy and rational.
- goldenkey 12y ago
  Maybe not so relevant but I imagine that most crazy scientists are happy and that leads to optimism in their ideas despite outside attacks on their research. I suppose happiness can be somewhat like armor against slander
- jqm 12y ago
  I don't disagree with either statement. But if there isn't a problem in the first place there can't be a solution. And if you don't see the problem because you are busy "being positive" then you can't work on it. I look at it like this... motion comes from polarity. Yin and Yang. Male and Female. Happiness and Misery. Just my opinion. And yes... I find the cult of constant happiness a bit annoying and superficial. I do think it is good for people to be happy __most of the time... I'm happy most of the time, but I'm not happy all the time and neither is anyone else. Nor should they be unless they are mental patients or animals. That's my point.
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dominotw 12y ago

Can someone tell me how this 'cult of happiness' started in western culture. The obsession with happiness is so pervasive and absurd that people are depressed because they are not happy 24x7 not because of a personal tragedy. Why is some vaguely defined happiness sold as some holy grail that must be achieved at all costs. There are billion dollar industries built around selling happiness ( fashion industry, fitness industry, education industry and a million others), and yet, and yet most of happiness we are sold is a distant dream for the most of us. Why? . Why do we live in a constant conflict both within ourselves and conflict with the outer world. Do you want to live your life in this constant conflict ? Most happiness peddling misses the important intricate relationship between happiness and pain/anxiety how they are the same feeling and pursuing one means pursuing the other. And yet most people are fooled into believing that we can somehow chase happiness while avoiding pain/anxiety. Even people who are very logical in every other parts of life buy into this absurdity. Does this have to do anything with rise of western industrial power when marketing changed from 'buy this because you need it' to 'buy this because it will make you happy' [1] 1. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/

chippy 12y ago
"the pursuit of happiness" is right there in the US Declaration of Independence. The country holds that the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right.
- carlosdp 12y ago
  That's a straw man though. The "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration is just fancy phrasing for what was originally the "right to own property". It was changed by Jefferson before the Declaration was finished because of some philosophical points from John Locke [1]. [1] http://hnn.us/article/46460 http://hnn.us/article/46460
  - chippy 12y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to use a logical fallacy...I just got it from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_o... Edits: Actually, reading the article fuller, this makes it even MORE interesting. Buying things, protecting products and property has always been tied up with happiness and the declaration. Fascinating! "life, liberty ... and the possession of outward things"

NoahTheDuke 12y ago

I actually found the Be Happier [0] article to be a better source of actionable and researched-backed advice. I put a bunch of the In A Nutshell sentences into my general Anki [1] deck, and it's had a measurable effect on my overall happiness. [0]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/ [1]: http://ankisrs.net/ http://ankisrs.net/

nerfhammer 12y ago
Re: the anki deck, what you do put on the front of the card vs. the back of the card?
- NoahTheDuke 12y ago
  I know it's not recommended, but I made a single page Note Type, and just put them on there: <b>Be Happier</b><div> </div>Interpersonal: Give the people around you opportunities to be generous. Ask them for favors. When it comes up, I quietly read it out loud to myself. I've found that seeing these cards often enough keeps their concepts on my mind, so when I go out with friends and someone offers to buy me a beer, I accept it and thank them, instead of refusing even to the point of awkwardness (as is my natural inclination).

noname123 12y ago

I'm happiest when I'm seeking out and feeding off all sorts of misery, schadenfreude of others' failures, absurdity, ennui, existential guilt, jealousy of others' success, fear of missing of out, fear of growing old, sexual frustration, impotence of metaphorical and of the limpy kind, the haze and alcohol/drug induced dependency, anxiety of status. I get angry and anxious reading my Facebook updates about weekend adventures that I wasn't part of, LinkedIn updates about undeserving acquaintances climbing the ladder higher than where I'm. I proceed to then practice mindful meditation to be fully conscious of my human nature to practice the dual art of sour grapes (e.g., "Going to law school given all of the articles I read is not worth it nowadays") and rationalization (e.g., "They may be richer, but I'm happier... as a maker."). Then I realize what a worthless person I'm but self-worthless transforms into the joy of masochism. I overeat, overdrink, stay up late, sleep in, skip out of work, act out, make inappropriate propositions to friends or strangers when inebriated. Nursing the bad hangover the morning after, I pat myself in the back for getting free therapy sessions from unwilling acquaintances and for my courage to let myself go to practice authenticity.

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lilsunnybee 12y ago
Behavior like the type you describe could easily be self destructive and hugely detrimental. > make inappropriate propositions to friends or strangers when inebriated this is really really not good
Centigonal 12y ago
I am not a psychiatrist, but you may be suffering from some form of mental illness. Please consider talking to a mental wellness professional about how you feel emotions. Nobody is going to try and make you change who you are, but almost anyone would benefit from understanding how their own mind works better.

pajju 12y ago

To be happy 1. Be like Water. Keep your mind like Water. Stateless. Formless. Keep flowing like water. Don't settle & Stop. http://soopara.com/being-water-be-water-my-friend-be-water-be-water/ http://soopara.com/being-water-be-water-my-friend-be-water-b... 2. Fall in love with yourself more than anyone else. Fall in love with your Passion, it already knows everything about you. 3. Try to Know Everything about your Previous life(life's). Thus, know the purpose of your life & connect those dots. Get closer to your niche & Life purpose. 4. Surround yourself with Right people. 5. Be in a place(Create that place) for yourself, where you got more freedom & autonomy to think and live. 6. Finally to be happy, be happy, create Good, great & positive thoughts always. What we think, we become. Its that simple! Our thoughts = Key Life Formula.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago

At the time in my life when I stopped reading LessWrong I became remarkably happier within a week. I attribute this to two reasons: 1. LessWrong's focus on optimizing your life is so great that whenever I failed at something or didn't uphold something I said I would do I felt bad about it. 2. One thing that makes me happy (and I think most others would agree they're happiest when this occurs as well) is accomplishment. I like the feeling of working on a goal and having that lead to tangible results, whether that means something I've created or something like lifting more weight in the gym. By actually making a change to how I act and seeing the results of that change in the world I developed a lot of confidence (I was formerly very shy and uncomfortable with myself despite having a lot of things going for me). I want to come back to the first point briefly as well. At the time I was reading LW it often felt like I was being productive. I'd think to myself "oh I just need to read this article on motivation and acrasia (the LW term for procrastination), and I'll never fail to do what I planned to do again. This caused me to spend my time preparing to do things that I never ended up doing, and it also set me up to feel angry with myself when I inevitably failed. One thing that helped me a lot was accepting that on top of everything we humans have going for us we're really just animals, and we get upset, or jealous, or sad, or angry, just like any other animal. So rather than try to eliminate these negative emotions from my life I came to accept them as normal and try to structure my life so that they occur as infrequently as possible. I've found a few ways of doing this that work for me, and I can post some of what's worked if anyone's interested. I still have bad days or bad moments, but when I do I accept it as normal and try to see what I can learn from it to lessen the impact next time, rather than trying to over-optimize the life of an unpredictable, fallible human making most of the important decisions in his life based on emotion (hint: that's all of us). The allure of LW is that we're perfectly rational or that we can at least make ourselves that we through sheer force of will. For better or for worse (I think for better) that's not the case.

bitexploder 12y ago
I think another key factor with a lot of modern unhappiness is that, as the article notes, money does not correlate to happiness as long as you are above the poverty line. We have lost the art of teaching people how to have a philosophy of life. We teach people how to have a craft. We teach basic morals. In religious households you may even be taught a pretty comprehensive "life philosophy", but it is often underpinned by many practices that defy rationality, and I think, lead many to unhappiness. A few years ago I stumbled on some pretty interesting reading about Stoicism and I have since read much of ancient greek philosophy and a bit of more modern stuff like Kant. It still sort of blows my mind just how insightful the ancient greek philosophers were about human nature. One of the key principles of Stoicism that has an analogue or similar set of features in many other philosophies is that it is essentially not things that happen to us that cause us pain/grief/sadness/unhappiness but our judgement and reaction to those things. It seems a little trite in a short post like this, and I can't sum up something as complex as an entire school of philosophical thought, but it has worked well for me. I have been in conversations where life philosophies like Stoicism and other related ancient greek philosophies get dismissed out of hand. Only to have a conversation wind over our current empirical approach to happiness. This less wrong article is /exactly/ what I call this empirical approach to happiness. Study all of the correlates, take all the best modern science about which behaviors yield the most happiness and which yield the least happiness and optimize accordingly. Yet, 1800+ years ago, ancient philosophers identified many of the same principles articles like this are encouraging us to apply to our lives. What is missing from this article, and I think that can often cause many people to fail at sticking with a plan, is a coherent and binding strategy for all of this disparate "strategies for happiness". The ancient philosophies are not perfect, us moderns have learned a thing or two since Socrates and Epictetus, but their insights on the human condition are too keen to ignore. We know a lot more about genetics, and I have witnessed the ravages of deep nearly incurable depression on my family. Even the ancient stoics knew of depression and how it could destroy rationality of the most adept philosophers. Outside of these parameters, I would argue, strongly, that we could all live with a little more Socrates and Epictetus in our life and a little less religious extremism and modern consumerism. And this brings me to my main point, without a rational, modern, and scientifically palatable life philosophy for how to think and feel about /everything/ it is very easy to put yourself into negative emotional states. I have found with a system to judge and evaluate emotions, and a keen understanding of the basic tendencies of my nature, I don't need a lot of empirical scientific knowledge to stay happy, though it does inform my approach. When I read your post it made me think of myself and my old strategy of decreasing pain/bad moments and increasing good moments where good feelings are more likely. Now, I proceed in a manner as I see fit and I simply accept that much of my feelings are up to me and that jealously, sadness, and anger are just my judgement or feelings about something. I have also, often found, that when properly analyzed, I am not truly sad about a situation, merely that my judgements were wrong. I have definitely embraced many stoic principles into my life, and when I continue to work at maintaining and improving my understanding and ability to apply the principles I have adopted, I stay very even keeled, neither greatly happy or greatly sad. Content. I try to stick close to my baseline and take joy in every day life (since most of life is every day life) :)

frbr 12y ago

"Happiness is subjective and relative" True story: When I was a kid, I was very happy with the rattling performance of my old Schneider PC. The sun was shining bright that day during the lunch break on the schoolyard, when a notoriously rich kid approached me with a grin on his face: "So you have a PC at home, huh? Want to see a real one?". A couple hours later we walked to his mansion. I took a seat in front of his PC. It looked new, and great. The monitor was very large. Very impressive. And then he turned it on. "It's a Pentium!". And he went on bragging about it. When I came back home and turned my PC on to continue working on my website, I was more aware than ever that my PC was slow. I knew it sucked, and from that moment on it depressed me. A couple years later I got a fast Dell. I was happy for a while. Until I got used to it. Morale: Sometimes, not knowing what can make you happy means you stay happy.

aytekin 12y ago

Here is a more actionable list: http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-make-yourself-happier http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-m...

lilsunnybee 12y ago

> 1. If you suffer from serious illness, depression, anxiety, paranoia, schizophrenia, or other serious problems, seek professional help first. Here's how. Link is broken. :-( Also nowhere in the list of happiness suggestions are volunteering and helping others to be found. Says to practice gratitude by appreciating all the good things you have, but never to actually help those less fortunate than you. The message is happiness is easy, as long as you aren't living below the poverty line or dealing with major problems in your life. Well plenty of people are dealing with both and could really use your help. Helping others might fulfill the gratitude and 'meaningful job' portions of this vanity list too.

halfcat 12y ago

The author mostly described the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. See "A Guide To The Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-and-how-can-it-turn-your-life-to-solid-gold/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-a...

tim333 12y ago

I tried actively increasing my happiness by reading up the on self help / academic stuff with moderate success. I probably managed to go from well below average (based on some Seligman tests) to a bit above. I kind of had a goal to get to the top 10% which I don't think I've really hit but onwards anyway...