This isn’t a fault of the post per se, but I wish there wasn’t so damn much equivocation on the word “happiness”. I know what sadness, contempt, contentment, rapture, &c. are—introspectively they strike me as a rather distinct states. But “happiness” means like ten or fifteen different things that are only somewhat related to each other. (FWIW smiling makes me feel bitter-sweet, not happy, so this might be an undue generalization from one example.)
Also, at least many kinds of happiness are measures of value, not ends in themselves, and so chasing after them specifically is getting dangerously close to wireheading or the problems of Goodhart’s law more generally.
Some feelings that have some “happiness”-nature: joy (piti), rapture (piti), bliss (sukha), loving-kindness (metta), adoration, sadness (paradoxically?), bitter-sweet-ness, exaltation, triumph, relief, a variation on wistfulness related to loving-kindness, power, pleasure, communing with God (maybe rapture/adoration/exaltation hybrid?), sehnsucht (sort of?). There are more but the list at least indicates the variety.
Owen Flanagan has done some decent work on eudaimonia, you might find interesting e.g. how eudaimonia (Buddha) differs from eudaimonia (Aristotle) and to some degree what kind of states of mind each value.
Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary.
The thrust of this post is mostly for hedonic well-being (or ‘experienced happiness’).
(For the “meaning and self-realization” side of things one should check out transpersonal psychology. Here’s an abridged version of William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience”.)
I believe it’s more mundane than that. From what I’ve read, eudaimonic well-being (aka life satisfaction) is measured by self-report tests (eg. “How satisfied are you with your life?”)
It would be particularly nice to understand what sense of “happiness” people (should) have in mind when they say that happiness is instrumentally useful.
When did people say happiness was instrumentally useful? I mean, I think it probably is to a certain extent, but I want happiness explicitly because it’s a terminal value, and I don’t judge people who place other values higher.
How do you make the distinction between valuing being happy versus valuing the things that cause you to be happy? I’m worried about happiness-seekers making errors here; I think that at least in some cases a person trying to increase his happiness sounds a lot like an economic planner trying to increase a country’s GDP, rather than trying to increase the things that GDP is (perhaps-incorrectly!) seen as an indicator of desirability of. It seems to me that various kinds of happiness are qualia that are outputs of certain motivational architectures which were created by variably egosyntonic genetic/memetic/Hebbian selection pressures aimed at solving not-entirely-motivational problems which might in themselves be valuable to solve. In such cases reifying the goal of being happy qua being happy would risk an unfortunate error. (This is all modulo my confusion about what people usually mean when they talk about “happiness” in general.)
There are things I value in addition to being happy. Creating quality art. Contributing to global human flourishing. But I definitely value happiness for its own sake. I don’t try to maximize happiness, but there’s a certain amount that I need to satisfice on.
I don’t know exactly what makes me happy—it’s includes “working on fulfilling projects,” “having a good social network”, “getting exercise”, and “having close, intimate friends/romantic-partners”. but not necessarily all of those things, all the time.
One important thing I learned last year is that sometimes, something I think of as “important” turns out to be making me unhappy. It’s useful to me to look at “total happiness GDP”, see when it started going down, and then figure out which variable was the cause.
This year, I started going to a bunch of new meetups, which were individually fun and valuable for my long-term non-happiness goals. But for some reason I became increasingly stressed and unhappy. Eventually I realized that I had forgotten I was an introvert, and even though I enjoy extroverted activities, I need to ensure I get alone time.
I cut back on meetups, and I feel much better now. I appreciate this because I feeling good is good, and also because it means I can get other things done.
Not sure if that explained it very well. I could write multiple pages about how I think about happiness, but if I’m doing that it probably should be a fully-formed post.
Yes, when I claimed that people sometimes say that happiness is instrumentally useful, that was not based on them saying happiness is worth pursuing and me concluding they must therefore think it’s instrumentally useful; rather, it was based on them saying happiness is instrumentally useful.
As for your second paragraph — I’m not certain, but I think it’s rational to treat happiness as a maximand. Is your objection not addressed by the sections “Optimal Happification” and “Happiness Interventions Work!” ?
To a significant extent it seems to me to be a question of moral philosophy. But there are also practical objections—for example, I might have missed it, but I don’t see “regularly smoke opium” as one of the listed recommendations. As far as increasing happiness goes I hear it’s hard to beat heroin. Nonetheless most people who strive for happiness don’t go the heroin/painkiller route. I think this says something about the desirability of experienced happiness by itself.
Most people I know believe that heroin (and similar mechanisms) get short-term happiness followed either by long-term unhappiness, or death. So I’m not sure how much their avoidance of that route says about how much they desire happiness by itself, other than that it isn’t strictly more important than longevity. (The fact that unhappy people don’t always kill themselves suggests that as well.)
Of course, it’s tricky inferring causation from correlation. It might be that we believe that about heroin because it reinforces our predisposition to reject experienced happiness as a motivator, for example, whether it’s true or not.
Most people I know believe that heroin (and similar mechanisms) get short-term happiness followed either by long-term unhappiness, or death.
That’s the long and short of it, I think. There is no reason not to use heroin to obtain maximum utility (for one’s self), if one a.) finds it pleasurable, b.) can afford it, and c.) is able to obtain pure and measured doses. (Or simply uses pharmaceuticals.) The perceived danger of heroin comes from its price and illegality (uncertain dosage + potentially dangerous impurities), which often results in penury, and overdose or illness, for the user.
People also want “real” happiness, by which I presume they mean happiness resulting from actions like painting a picture, and not happiness induced by chemical… which is silly, since the two feelings are produced by the same neurochemistry and functionally identical (i.e., all happiness is ultimately chemical). (The perceived difference may still bother someone enough that they choose a different route, though, especially if they don’t realize they can just paint a picture… on heroin.)
Well, you’re leaving out any discussion of goals I might have other than pleasure, and how well heroin helps me achieve those goals. One difference between heroin use and painting a picture is that the latter case causes there to be a picture, for example, and I might value the existence of the picture in addition to valuing my neurochemical state.
But, sure, if I can do all the same stuff in the world as well or better while maintaining a heroin habit, then that’s not relevant.
I was hoping someone would bring that up. You’ve already given the same answer I would, though: it’s not necessarily an either/or scenario like Nozick’s “experience machine” concept, so it’s possible to have both heroin and pictures, in theory.
See my post below; I think this is due to a.) a misunderstanding of the nature of happiness (a thought that chemically-induced happiness is different from “regular” happiness… which is also chemical), b.) a feeling that opium is incredibly dangerous (as it can be), and c.) a misunderstanding of how opium makes you feel—people can say “I know opium makes you happy” without actually feeling/knowing that it does so. That is, their mental picture of how they’d feel if they smoked opium doesn’t correspond to the reality, which is—for most people—that it makes them feel much, much better than they would have imagined.
This isn’t a fault of the post per se, but I wish there wasn’t so damn much equivocation on the word “happiness”. I know what sadness, contempt, contentment, rapture, &c. are—introspectively they strike me as a rather distinct states. But “happiness” means like ten or fifteen different things that are only somewhat related to each other. (FWIW smiling makes me feel bitter-sweet, not happy, so this might be an undue generalization from one example.)
Also, at least many kinds of happiness are measures of value, not ends in themselves, and so chasing after them specifically is getting dangerously close to wireheading or the problems of Goodhart’s law more generally.
Some feelings that have some “happiness”-nature: joy (piti), rapture (piti), bliss (sukha), loving-kindness (metta), adoration, sadness (paradoxically?), bitter-sweet-ness, exaltation, triumph, relief, a variation on wistfulness related to loving-kindness, power, pleasure, communing with God (maybe rapture/adoration/exaltation hybrid?), sehnsucht (sort of?). There are more but the list at least indicates the variety.
Owen Flanagan has done some decent work on eudaimonia, you might find interesting e.g. how eudaimonia (Buddha) differs from eudaimonia (Aristotle) and to some degree what kind of states of mind each value.
Re Equivocation: Good point. The important distinction seems to be between hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being.
Found on the web:
The thrust of this post is mostly for hedonic well-being (or ‘experienced happiness’).
(For the “meaning and self-realization” side of things one should check out transpersonal psychology. Here’s an abridged version of William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience”.)
I believe it’s more mundane than that. From what I’ve read, eudaimonic well-being (aka life satisfaction) is measured by self-report tests (eg. “How satisfied are you with your life?”)
It would be particularly nice to understand what sense of “happiness” people (should) have in mind when they say that happiness is instrumentally useful.
When did people say happiness was instrumentally useful? I mean, I think it probably is to a certain extent, but I want happiness explicitly because it’s a terminal value, and I don’t judge people who place other values higher.
How do you make the distinction between valuing being happy versus valuing the things that cause you to be happy? I’m worried about happiness-seekers making errors here; I think that at least in some cases a person trying to increase his happiness sounds a lot like an economic planner trying to increase a country’s GDP, rather than trying to increase the things that GDP is (perhaps-incorrectly!) seen as an indicator of desirability of. It seems to me that various kinds of happiness are qualia that are outputs of certain motivational architectures which were created by variably egosyntonic genetic/memetic/Hebbian selection pressures aimed at solving not-entirely-motivational problems which might in themselves be valuable to solve. In such cases reifying the goal of being happy qua being happy would risk an unfortunate error. (This is all modulo my confusion about what people usually mean when they talk about “happiness” in general.)
There are things I value in addition to being happy. Creating quality art. Contributing to global human flourishing. But I definitely value happiness for its own sake. I don’t try to maximize happiness, but there’s a certain amount that I need to satisfice on.
I don’t know exactly what makes me happy—it’s includes “working on fulfilling projects,” “having a good social network”, “getting exercise”, and “having close, intimate friends/romantic-partners”. but not necessarily all of those things, all the time.
One important thing I learned last year is that sometimes, something I think of as “important” turns out to be making me unhappy. It’s useful to me to look at “total happiness GDP”, see when it started going down, and then figure out which variable was the cause.
This year, I started going to a bunch of new meetups, which were individually fun and valuable for my long-term non-happiness goals. But for some reason I became increasingly stressed and unhappy. Eventually I realized that I had forgotten I was an introvert, and even though I enjoy extroverted activities, I need to ensure I get alone time.
I cut back on meetups, and I feel much better now. I appreciate this because I feeling good is good, and also because it means I can get other things done.
Not sure if that explained it very well. I could write multiple pages about how I think about happiness, but if I’m doing that it probably should be a fully-formed post.
Yes, when I claimed that people sometimes say that happiness is instrumentally useful, that was not based on them saying happiness is worth pursuing and me concluding they must therefore think it’s instrumentally useful; rather, it was based on them saying happiness is instrumentally useful.
They didn’t say it on this page though, hence my confusion.
As for your second paragraph — I’m not certain, but I think it’s rational to treat happiness as a maximand. Is your objection not addressed by the sections “Optimal Happification” and “Happiness Interventions Work!” ?
To a significant extent it seems to me to be a question of moral philosophy. But there are also practical objections—for example, I might have missed it, but I don’t see “regularly smoke opium” as one of the listed recommendations. As far as increasing happiness goes I hear it’s hard to beat heroin. Nonetheless most people who strive for happiness don’t go the heroin/painkiller route. I think this says something about the desirability of experienced happiness by itself.
Most people I know believe that heroin (and similar mechanisms) get short-term happiness followed either by long-term unhappiness, or death. So I’m not sure how much their avoidance of that route says about how much they desire happiness by itself, other than that it isn’t strictly more important than longevity. (The fact that unhappy people don’t always kill themselves suggests that as well.)
Of course, it’s tricky inferring causation from correlation. It might be that we believe that about heroin because it reinforces our predisposition to reject experienced happiness as a motivator, for example, whether it’s true or not.
That’s the long and short of it, I think. There is no reason not to use heroin to obtain maximum utility (for one’s self), if one a.) finds it pleasurable, b.) can afford it, and c.) is able to obtain pure and measured doses. (Or simply uses pharmaceuticals.) The perceived danger of heroin comes from its price and illegality (uncertain dosage + potentially dangerous impurities), which often results in penury, and overdose or illness, for the user.
People also want “real” happiness, by which I presume they mean happiness resulting from actions like painting a picture, and not happiness induced by chemical… which is silly, since the two feelings are produced by the same neurochemistry and functionally identical (i.e., all happiness is ultimately chemical). (The perceived difference may still bother someone enough that they choose a different route, though, especially if they don’t realize they can just paint a picture… on heroin.)
Well, you’re leaving out any discussion of goals I might have other than pleasure, and how well heroin helps me achieve those goals. One difference between heroin use and painting a picture is that the latter case causes there to be a picture, for example, and I might value the existence of the picture in addition to valuing my neurochemical state.
But, sure, if I can do all the same stuff in the world as well or better while maintaining a heroin habit, then that’s not relevant.
I was hoping someone would bring that up. You’ve already given the same answer I would, though: it’s not necessarily an either/or scenario like Nozick’s “experience machine” concept, so it’s possible to have both heroin and pictures, in theory.
Are pure and measured doses safe? What about the adverse consequences of addiction?
This seems reasonably close to reinventing fun theory.
See my post below; I think this is due to a.) a misunderstanding of the nature of happiness (a thought that chemically-induced happiness is different from “regular” happiness… which is also chemical), b.) a feeling that opium is incredibly dangerous (as it can be), and c.) a misunderstanding of how opium makes you feel—people can say “I know opium makes you happy” without actually feeling/knowing that it does so. That is, their mental picture of how they’d feel if they smoked opium doesn’t correspond to the reality, which is—for most people—that it makes them feel much, much better than they would have imagined.