Happiness interventions
I found a website called Happier Human. It’s about how to become and stay happier. I’ve trawled through it. Here are the best posts in my opinion:
[Meditate]. Don’t [worry/overthink/fantasise/compare]. [Disregard desire]. [Motivate]. [Exercise gratitude]. [Don’t have kids].
[Buy many small gifts]. [Trade some happiness for productivity]. [Set] [happiness goals]
If you’ve found any other happiness interventions on any website, please share them.
Re: the linked site. Browsing the homepage raises so many red flags that it’s borderline overwhelming.
Offering me a free 45-page report? - Awesome, what do I get if I pay you money?
16 Happiness Ideas That Really Work! - Um, good? Is this seriously BuzzFeed style clickbait?
Direct Brain Stimulation, a Trillion Dollar Invention? - Wow that’s a lot of money, I’d better start reading right now!
And this overtly manipulative style continues for basically the entire first page of posts.
Admittedly everything that I’ve pointed out is entirely unrelated to the actual content—it may be well researched and worthy of a second chance. But there are so many blatant attempts to manipulate the reader to click click click that I find it extremely difficult to take seriously right from the start. The broken links in the OP don’t help at all.
If only everyone else had the same aesthetics as you. It’s probably possible to make money in the space without being blatantly manipulative, but that’s much much harder. I’m glad I’m not working in the space anymore.
Almost six months on from my original post, with some contemplating in a dark mood about when I’ve been happiest, I thought back to when I used to visit your website. I thought back to the changing of my attitude to the site based on the negative unfair comments here, I’ve reconsidered and realised that it’s really had an incredible positive impact on me. I call bullshit on all ya’ll calls of bullshit. Happier Human is amazing and Amit you’re a top bloke. I was just about to call you out on pussying out when all these intimidating rationalists called you out on stuff. But now, as I write this, I suspect you conceded to being less well research and such not because you’re work is bad, as people might infer, but because you’re humble, non-confrontational, and lowering your expectations is all part of the recipe for happiness you taught me. Once again thank you so much for your content. You almost certainly saved my life. I owe you an apology and I’m very grateful.
This website was actually made by SF bay area community member Amit Amin. He writes about it here and here. From talking to him, my impression is that much happiness research is pretty low-quality due to the pressure to publish results and whatnot.
BTW, you might want to fix the links—you did them markdown-style, which works for comments but not posts. And maybe cut down on the amount of whitespace in your post some. (E.g. use bullet points?)
John has the correct impression—I actually switched careers nine months ago. I now work as a programmer at a startup.
My most popular post, which brings in 20,000 to 40,000 pageviews a month, was written five months into my career (http://happierhuman.com/benefits-of-gratitude/). Everything after was less popular. Why? Because as my understanding of statistics and methodology improved, my writing possessed fewer bold and enthusiastic claims, which non-LW folk love.
I hold a medium degree of confidence in my latest posts, e.g. my one about meditation. Everything else… well I’m willing to bet $10k that gratitude, for example, can improve the well-being of a large subset of folks. But it would not surprise me if future studies showed that gratitude journals are only 50% as effective as the current batch of research claims.
If you’re looking for happiness advice, positive psychology has lots of great ideas. But most interventions are less likely to help and less effective than claimed.
Almost six months on from my original post, with some contemplating in a dark mood about when I’ve been happiest, I thought back to when I used to visit your website. I thought back to the changing of my attitude to the site based on the negative unfair comments here, I’ve reconsidered and realised that it’s really had an incredible positive impact on me. I call bullshit on all ya’ll calls of bullshit. Happier Human is amazing and Amit you’re a top bloke. I was just about to call you out on pussying out when all these intimidating rationalists called you out on stuff. But now, as I write this, I suspect you conceded to being less well research and such not because you’re work is bad, as people might infer, but because you’re humble, non-confrontational, and lowering your expectations is all part of the recipe for happiness you taught me. Once again thank you so much for your content. You almost certainly saved my life. I owe you an apology and I’m very grateful.
I haven’t read any of the site but recognised this theory immediately. It has purportedly been shown to rest on an abuse of mathematics: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36910/title/-Positivity-Ratio—Debunked/
Author of the site here. Totally agree.
The evolutionary psychology may or may not be correct. I think there’s some kernels of truth to it. But the mathematical model is crazy insanity, and I’m somewhat ashamed that I needed someone to point it out to me, especially considering that a brief look at the studies done which measured and correlated positivity ratios found ‘dividing lines’ all over the place, from 2 to 6 (http://happierhuman.com/losada-ratio).
The mathematics-abuse aside, I don’t think it’s a completely ridiculous idea. It seems obviously true that somebody experiencing negative emotions in a ratio of 1000 against every positive emotion cannot be described as “flourishing”, whereas someone experiencing the reverse is probably permanently high on what must be a supremely lucrative designer drug.
But to be as precise as even a single order of magnitude in your range of flourishing ratios implies a degree of experimental rigour that I’ve never, ever heard of in psychology apart from arguably in IQ testing.
There’s also a causation/corellation issue which must be quite challenging to disentangle.
In their pursuit of precision and the trappings of scienticity they’ve perhaps done at least as much to damage their idea as to nurture it. Think there’s a lesson in there.
It’s good to see Alan Sokal is still doing God’s work.
Discussion posts use a different markup than comments. Please use the editor function to render links (mark text and cllick on the link icon in the menu).
Dito for your previous post.
Suprising points about happiness economics and positive psychology as it related to relationships after further reading from various sources
No singles are conceited or self-absorbed enough to celebrate a single-ness anniversary, but couples are. So, you can be forgiven for thinking that that being in a relationship is superior to singledome.
-http://thoughtcatalog.com/maya-kachroo-levine/2015/06/read-this-if-youre-in-your-20s-and-have-never-been-in-a-serious-relationship/
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology#Marriage
http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/cassie-robinson/20071125501
-www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242818/The-formula-finding-love-Why-theres-285-000-chance-meeting-perfect-partner.html
-https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-college-graduates-have-never-had-a-romantic-relationship
-www.researchgate.net/publication/226476882_Character_Strengths_and_Well-Being_Are_There_Gender_Differences
-Journal of Happiness Studies. Springer. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
What I shame about the bolded part since I just discovered opiuo and my intuition is that it would dramatically improve my life. Suppose it’s just an addiction. Darn the false prospect eudemonia from aesthetic appreciation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_economics#Relationships_and_children
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology#Social_ties
See also: cost of raising a child. I only want kids cause they’re light, portable, comfy, accessible and a downward social comparison that reinforces my normativity, authority and self-efficacy when I look after one. But it’s because of the superficiality of those reasons that I’d rather not commmit to the burden of responsibility of having them, particularly since those features are pretty transient (newborn to 2 years old maybe)
tl;dr: friends are important to happiness, relationships are basically irrelevant! What a relief! Except for having kids. That’s a relationship you don’t want if you want to be happiest.
Why did this discussion post get such low karma?
I don’t know (and haven’t voted it either up or down), but here are some conjectures.
The red flags listed in Tim’s comment.
The formatting issues this post had when it was first made.
There’s little content to your post beyond “here’s a website. I like it. Here are some links into it”—nothing about why you think it’s good, no information about the theories or evidence behind it, no information about who made it and why we should trust their advice on happiness, etc.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/life-is-picture-but-you-live-in-pixel.html is one of my favorites.