One takeaway from reading this book, if you didn’t already do it, is to ask yourself whether what you’re doing will bring you happiness.
Actually, why not make that a takeaway from reading this review? Go take five minutes, I’ll still be here when you get back.
I have to say that this is a somewhat odd approach. Now, maybe you didn’t mean it in quite this way, but for the sake of exploring the point, let’s take your suggestion very literally.
What am I doing right now? Reading a Less Wrong post, writing some comments on it.
Will this bring me happiness? Um… probably… not…? (Wouldn’t it be pretty weird if the answer were “yes”? This sort of activity could bring me various things—satisfaction, personal growth, some concrete benefit or the accomplishment of some goals—but happiness? This seems more like a wrong question than anything…)
So… should I… stop reading this post, or… what? (Should I stop reading things on the internet? Should I stop reading things… at all??) Surely not, right? I mean, I don’t only do things because they will bring me happiness! (Does anyone? Does it even make sense to attempt such a policy?)
But if “check if the thing you’re doing will bring you happiness; if not, stop doing it” is not what we’re meant to do with the answer to that question, then—what?
Maybe I’m missing something here, but… actively pursuing “happiness” is already a somewhat weird thing to be doing to begin with; trying to pursue happiness by asking whether the thing that you’re doing will bring you happiness seems like an almost wholesale confusion.
“No” is an answer. Maybe you want personal growth, maybe you want the accomplishment of some goal, maybe you want a ham sandwich. If you did want to be happy, and commenting on LessWrong posts did not make you happy, then I think you should consider what you’re doing for a couple minutes then go do something else which will make you happier.
Lots of people want to be happy. Uh, citation needed and I don’t have one. I think actively pursuing happiness is a pretty normal thing to do, albeit subject to all the usual mistakes that people usually make in pursuing any of their goals. I am in general a fan of people thinking for a few minutes by the clock about how to get what they want, maybe getting a little strategic about it. If being happy is not the thing you want then I suggest going and doing things that you think will get you what you want.
Right now I’m writing a reply to a LessWrong comment. I don’t particularly expect this to make me happy. Earlier today though, I was playing some Magic: The Gathering with some friends, which did make me happy. I did that that because I was talking to them a week ago and had a thought something like “oh, hanging out with friends usually makes me happy, playing Magic usually makes me happy, I should see if they want to draft sometime” and then we planned a draft and invited people over. It worked pretty well!
Maybe I’m missing something here, but… actively pursuing “happiness” is already a somewhat weird thing to be doing to begin with; trying to pursue happiness by asking whether the thing that you’re doing will bring you happiness seems like an almost wholesale confusion.
Allow me to present the same outline with a few text replacements.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but… actively pursuing “a ham sandwich” is already a somewhat weird thing to be doing to begin with; trying to pursue a ham sandwich by asking whether the thing that you’re doing will bring you a ham sandwich seems like an almost wholesale confusion.
I dunno, that’s how I’ve gotten most of my ham sandwiches. Seems a pretty good general approach.
Allow me to present the same outline with a few text replacements.
But… that transformation doesn’t work, at all. Actively pursuing a ham sandwich makes perfect sense. (And if you want a ham sandwich, asking whether what you are doing will in fact get you a ham sandwich is likewise a sensible thing to do.) But actively pursuing happiness, specifically, doesn’t make sense. That’s my point.
Do you want to be happy?
I mean, it’s clearly better than the alternative (it’s not like I want to not be happy, much less want to be unhappy), but on the other hand, I don’t “want to be happy” in the same sense that I want most other things.
Wanting to be happy seems like like, say, wanting to get an Olympic gold medal. If you train for the Olympics in some sport, and compete, and win, then you will get a gold medal, and that’s cool. On the other hand, suppose that due to some geopolitical reasons or something, all the other athletes in that sport stay home that year, and you “compete” against nobody, and “win”, and get a gold medal. Did you get what you wanted? Or, how about if you blackmail all the judges with compromising photographs, and they award you a gold medal even though you performed terribly and clearly lost?
Conversely, what if you compete in the Olympics, and win, but your opponent blackmailed the judges, and you don’t get a gold medal, even though you “should”. Is that better or worse than the preceding two scenarios? Seems like… better, no?
Clearly the gold medal wasn’t actually the point… right? But if I ask you “do you want to get an Olympic gold medal”, “no” seems like the wrong answer.
Well, but what about “actively pursuing an Olympic gold medal”? That sort of makes sense, but… not really. “Winning the Olympics (in whatever sport)”, that makes sense. And one does get gold medals for that. But the medal itself is not exactly the point.
Lots of people want to be happy. Uh, citation needed and I don’t have one.
I certainly won’t demand a citation for this, but I think that probably a lot more people mistakenly think that they “want to be happy” than actually want to be happy.
I think actively pursuing happiness is a pretty normal thing to do, albeit subject to all the usual mistakes that people usually make in pursuing any of their goals.
Well… it’s hard to know how to take this. Like, what if I said “I think that buying lottery tickets is a pretty normal thing to do, albeit subject to all the usual mistakes that people usually make in figuring out what is likely to benefit them”? There’s a sense in which it’s true, but on the other hand, the second clause negates the first one: buying lottery tickets is one of the “usual mistakes that people usually make” in such matters!
I am in general a fan of people thinking for a few minutes by the clock about how to get what they want, maybe getting a little strategic about it.
The ham sandwich replacement works pretty well in my head, I don’t understand the Olympic medal analogy, and the lottery tickets thing is confusing to me. I agree people can be mistaken about what they want (though I don’t default to assuming that) and I’m confused what you think a lot of people actually want and mistake for wanting to be happy? We seem to have some kind of communication problem or alternately pretty different experiences of happiness, and I’m not sure what’s going on here. I’m glad we’re on the same page about thinking by the clock and being strategic at least.
I’m going to try zooming way way out, and dropping any particular technique (mine or from the book.) Can you tell me where in these sequence you start to disagree, or alternately if you agree with all of the below?
Happiness is some kind of state humans can be in, and they can notice when they’re happy or unhappy if they check. (I’m not trying to argue definitions of emotion vs sensation, I’m not trying to split too many hairs between joy vs happiness.)
Happiness is a state humans can prefer to be in. I have no idea what the actual numbers are here and I don’t think it matters for this sequence, if I go up to one human and ask “hey do you want to be happy?” and they think for a minute before honestly and accurately saying “yes” then I think the rest of this sequence works for that one person. (I do think this describes a lot of people though.)
Some kind of repeatable, particular circumstances predictably make a human happier and others unhappier. Put me on a sunny beach with a new book and a lemonade, I’ll be more happy. Hang me upside down by my ankles and dump fire ants down my shorts, I’ll be less happy. (It’s fine if different circumstances make different humans react differently, for instance if I like beaches and Anakin hates sand. It’s also fine if this isn’t 100% certain like if some days I’m not in the mood for a book as long as it’s enough of a pattern to work with.)
People can, through introspection and effort, arrange the world such that they wind up in the happy circumstances more often. This evening I could put lemonade and a book in my backpack and go to the beach, or I could lie facedown on my basement floor, or I could bring some rope and find an anthill. (List not exhaustive.)
Things I am not saying:
People shouldn’t aim for goals other than being happy.
People should optimize for being happy all of the time.
What makes me happy will make you happy or vice versa.
People are always right about what will make them happy.
Each individual step towards being happy will also make someone happy.
The ham sandwich replacement works pretty well in my head, I don’t understand the Olympic medal analogy, and the lottery tickets thing is confusing to me. I agree people can be mistaken about what they want (though I don’t default to assuming that) and I’m confused what you think a lot of people actually want and mistake for wanting to be happy? We seem to have some kind of communication problem or alternately pretty different experiences of happiness, and I’m not sure what’s going on here.
Huh. Yeah, this amount of communication failure surprises me. I did expect that you’d disagree with at least some of that, but not that it wouldn’t get across at all…
Can you tell me where in these sequence you start to disagree, or alternately if you agree with all of the below?
I disagree with #1, partially disagree with #2 (the first sentence is ok-ish but the given test is basically meaningless and so can’t be the basis for any of this reasoning), basically agree with #3, and agree with what #4 says but almost certainly not with what you mean by it. (I also—obviously—disagree with the notion that these things form some kind of meaningful sequence of specificity or claim strength etc.)
Things I am not saying:
Sure, I didn’t think that you were saying any of those things, so this all makes sense.
Okay, let me try starting from before that point then.
There’s a bunch of things commonly referred to as emotions. Happiness is one. Anger is another. Sadness is a third. This list is not exhaustive but there’s lots of lists of emotions, here’s one.
Have you ever felt any of these, such that you could say “gosh, I’m really angry right now” as a fact about the world?
basically agree with #3, and agree with what #4 says but almost certainly not with what you mean by it. (I also—obviously—disagree with the notion that these things form some kind of meaningful sequence of specificity or claim strength etc.)
- wait. You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy? Like, I could go to the beach, and I would be happy, but I couldn’t notice that fact? I put them in that order because I assumed if you were going to disagree with one of them you’d also disagree with all the ones after, so I’m pretty surprised here.
I think many of the things on that list are not emotions. (I mean, surely “creative” is not an emotion? “Respected”? “Intimate”? “Exposed”? “Sceptical”? “Judgmental”??)
Have you ever felt any of these, such that you could say “gosh, I’m really angry right now” as a fact about the world?
Of course.
You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy? Like, I could go to the beach, and I would be happy, but I couldn’t notice that fact? I put them in that order because I assumed if you were going to disagree with one of them you’d also disagree with all the ones after, so I’m pretty surprised here.
You wrote (#1):
Happiness is some kind of state humans can be in, and they can notice when they’re happy or unhappy if they check.
I think that thinking of happiness as a “state” is basically a mistake even if there’s some technical sense in which it’s true. I also do not think that people are very good at noticing whether they’re happy or unhappy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “can’t” but it’s not like checking whether you’re angry (which usually has relatively standard and straightforwardly checkable physiological correlates). I expect that the average person asking “am I happy right now” is more likely than not to get a wrong or nonsensical answer.
You also wrote (#2):
Happiness is a state humans can prefer to be in.
As above, I don’t think that happiness is a “state” in a useful sense of the word, but I do think that humans can (and most, probably, do) prefer to be happy rather than not being happy.
And (#3):
Some kind of repeatable, particular circumstances predictably make a human happier and others unhappier.
Yep, generally true. One can quibble with this (e.g. the caveats that you give in parentheses), but as a basic pattern it is true.
But:
You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy?
Ah, but notice the difference: “make a person happier” vs. “make a person happy”. The latter makes sense if happiness is just an emotional state that one can be in. But if that’s not right—if happiness is more like a characteristic of a person’s experience over time, for example—then the latter form doesn’t make much sense anymore. But the former makes sense either way.
I have to say that this is a somewhat odd approach. Now, maybe you didn’t mean it in quite this way, but for the sake of exploring the point, let’s take your suggestion very literally.
What am I doing right now? Reading a Less Wrong post, writing some comments on it.
Will this bring me happiness? Um… probably… not…? (Wouldn’t it be pretty weird if the answer were “yes”? This sort of activity could bring me various things—satisfaction, personal growth, some concrete benefit or the accomplishment of some goals—but happiness? This seems more like a wrong question than anything…)
So… should I… stop reading this post, or… what? (Should I stop reading things on the internet? Should I stop reading things… at all??) Surely not, right? I mean, I don’t only do things because they will bring me happiness! (Does anyone? Does it even make sense to attempt such a policy?)
But if “check if the thing you’re doing will bring you happiness; if not, stop doing it” is not what we’re meant to do with the answer to that question, then—what?
Maybe I’m missing something here, but… actively pursuing “happiness” is already a somewhat weird thing to be doing to begin with; trying to pursue happiness by asking whether the thing that you’re doing will bring you happiness seems like an almost wholesale confusion.
Do you want to be happy?
“No” is an answer. Maybe you want personal growth, maybe you want the accomplishment of some goal, maybe you want a ham sandwich. If you did want to be happy, and commenting on LessWrong posts did not make you happy, then I think you should consider what you’re doing for a couple minutes then go do something else which will make you happier.
Lots of people want to be happy. Uh, citation needed and I don’t have one. I think actively pursuing happiness is a pretty normal thing to do, albeit subject to all the usual mistakes that people usually make in pursuing any of their goals. I am in general a fan of people thinking for a few minutes by the clock about how to get what they want, maybe getting a little strategic about it. If being happy is not the thing you want then I suggest going and doing things that you think will get you what you want.
Right now I’m writing a reply to a LessWrong comment. I don’t particularly expect this to make me happy. Earlier today though, I was playing some Magic: The Gathering with some friends, which did make me happy. I did that that because I was talking to them a week ago and had a thought something like “oh, hanging out with friends usually makes me happy, playing Magic usually makes me happy, I should see if they want to draft sometime” and then we planned a draft and invited people over. It worked pretty well!
Allow me to present the same outline with a few text replacements.
I dunno, that’s how I’ve gotten most of my ham sandwiches. Seems a pretty good general approach.
But… that transformation doesn’t work, at all. Actively pursuing a ham sandwich makes perfect sense. (And if you want a ham sandwich, asking whether what you are doing will in fact get you a ham sandwich is likewise a sensible thing to do.) But actively pursuing happiness, specifically, doesn’t make sense. That’s my point.
I mean, it’s clearly better than the alternative (it’s not like I want to not be happy, much less want to be unhappy), but on the other hand, I don’t “want to be happy” in the same sense that I want most other things.
Wanting to be happy seems like like, say, wanting to get an Olympic gold medal. If you train for the Olympics in some sport, and compete, and win, then you will get a gold medal, and that’s cool. On the other hand, suppose that due to some geopolitical reasons or something, all the other athletes in that sport stay home that year, and you “compete” against nobody, and “win”, and get a gold medal. Did you get what you wanted? Or, how about if you blackmail all the judges with compromising photographs, and they award you a gold medal even though you performed terribly and clearly lost?
Conversely, what if you compete in the Olympics, and win, but your opponent blackmailed the judges, and you don’t get a gold medal, even though you “should”. Is that better or worse than the preceding two scenarios? Seems like… better, no?
Clearly the gold medal wasn’t actually the point… right? But if I ask you “do you want to get an Olympic gold medal”, “no” seems like the wrong answer.
Well, but what about “actively pursuing an Olympic gold medal”? That sort of makes sense, but… not really. “Winning the Olympics (in whatever sport)”, that makes sense. And one does get gold medals for that. But the medal itself is not exactly the point.
I certainly won’t demand a citation for this, but I think that probably a lot more people mistakenly think that they “want to be happy” than actually want to be happy.
Well… it’s hard to know how to take this. Like, what if I said “I think that buying lottery tickets is a pretty normal thing to do, albeit subject to all the usual mistakes that people usually make in figuring out what is likely to benefit them”? There’s a sense in which it’s true, but on the other hand, the second clause negates the first one: buying lottery tickets is one of the “usual mistakes that people usually make” in such matters!
Totally, yes, no argument there.
The ham sandwich replacement works pretty well in my head, I don’t understand the Olympic medal analogy, and the lottery tickets thing is confusing to me. I agree people can be mistaken about what they want (though I don’t default to assuming that) and I’m confused what you think a lot of people actually want and mistake for wanting to be happy? We seem to have some kind of communication problem or alternately pretty different experiences of happiness, and I’m not sure what’s going on here. I’m glad we’re on the same page about thinking by the clock and being strategic at least.
I’m going to try zooming way way out, and dropping any particular technique (mine or from the book.) Can you tell me where in these sequence you start to disagree, or alternately if you agree with all of the below?
Happiness is some kind of state humans can be in, and they can notice when they’re happy or unhappy if they check. (I’m not trying to argue definitions of emotion vs sensation, I’m not trying to split too many hairs between joy vs happiness.)
Happiness is a state humans can prefer to be in. I have no idea what the actual numbers are here and I don’t think it matters for this sequence, if I go up to one human and ask “hey do you want to be happy?” and they think for a minute before honestly and accurately saying “yes” then I think the rest of this sequence works for that one person. (I do think this describes a lot of people though.)
Some kind of repeatable, particular circumstances predictably make a human happier and others unhappier. Put me on a sunny beach with a new book and a lemonade, I’ll be more happy. Hang me upside down by my ankles and dump fire ants down my shorts, I’ll be less happy. (It’s fine if different circumstances make different humans react differently, for instance if I like beaches and Anakin hates sand. It’s also fine if this isn’t 100% certain like if some days I’m not in the mood for a book as long as it’s enough of a pattern to work with.)
People can, through introspection and effort, arrange the world such that they wind up in the happy circumstances more often. This evening I could put lemonade and a book in my backpack and go to the beach, or I could lie facedown on my basement floor, or I could bring some rope and find an anthill. (List not exhaustive.)
Things I am not saying:
People shouldn’t aim for goals other than being happy.
People should optimize for being happy all of the time.
What makes me happy will make you happy or vice versa.
People are always right about what will make them happy.
Each individual step towards being happy will also make someone happy.
Huh. Yeah, this amount of communication failure surprises me. I did expect that you’d disagree with at least some of that, but not that it wouldn’t get across at all…
I disagree with #1, partially disagree with #2 (the first sentence is ok-ish but the given test is basically meaningless and so can’t be the basis for any of this reasoning), basically agree with #3, and agree with what #4 says but almost certainly not with what you mean by it. (I also—obviously—disagree with the notion that these things form some kind of meaningful sequence of specificity or claim strength etc.)
Sure, I didn’t think that you were saying any of those things, so this all makes sense.
Okay, let me try starting from before that point then.
There’s a bunch of things commonly referred to as emotions. Happiness is one. Anger is another. Sadness is a third. This list is not exhaustive but there’s lots of lists of emotions, here’s one.
Have you ever felt any of these, such that you could say “gosh, I’m really angry right now” as a fact about the world?
- wait. You don’t think happiness is a thing that people can notice about themselves, but you do think there’s some kind of circumstance that makes a particular person happy? Like, I could go to the beach, and I would be happy, but I couldn’t notice that fact? I put them in that order because I assumed if you were going to disagree with one of them you’d also disagree with all the ones after, so I’m pretty surprised here.
I do not agree with this.
(But if you consider happiness to be an emotion, then it makes even less sense to optimize for it!)
I think many of the things on that list are not emotions. (I mean, surely “creative” is not an emotion? “Respected”? “Intimate”? “Exposed”? “Sceptical”? “Judgmental”??)
Of course.
You wrote (#1):
I think that thinking of happiness as a “state” is basically a mistake even if there’s some technical sense in which it’s true. I also do not think that people are very good at noticing whether they’re happy or unhappy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “can’t” but it’s not like checking whether you’re angry (which usually has relatively standard and straightforwardly checkable physiological correlates). I expect that the average person asking “am I happy right now” is more likely than not to get a wrong or nonsensical answer.
You also wrote (#2):
As above, I don’t think that happiness is a “state” in a useful sense of the word, but I do think that humans can (and most, probably, do) prefer to be happy rather than not being happy.
And (#3):
Yep, generally true. One can quibble with this (e.g. the caveats that you give in parentheses), but as a basic pattern it is true.
But:
Ah, but notice the difference: “make a person happier” vs. “make a person happy”. The latter makes sense if happiness is just an emotional state that one can be in. But if that’s not right—if happiness is more like a characteristic of a person’s experience over time, for example—then the latter form doesn’t make much sense anymore. But the former makes sense either way.