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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

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)

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)