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The Hedonic Treadmill

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Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#81

Post by guyzero »

neogodless wrote: post #6

"The material standard of living of a homeless person in modern-day Manhattan is several dozens of times higher than the wealthiest of kings ten thousand years ago." Can someone explain to me what their definition of "standard of living" is in this context? I get that they might have access to cleaner water, but surely easy access to food prepared for you and having a roof over your head in a snowstorm would sound re…

So I'm not sure I agree with the original author but a modern homeless person can wander into a hospital emergency ward and get treated for a variety of diseases that would have killed a medieval king. Assuming we mean 1,000 years ago and not 10,000 years ago which may actually pre-date kings.

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#82

Post by anotherhacker »

Simp wrote: post #53
anotherhacker wrote: post #42

The author is flat out wrong. The Hedonic Treadmill has been disproven. Moreover, the author seems to be conflating the concept of the treadmill, with adaptation. The former denotes the subject returns to the original state. The latter recognizes that while we become accustomed to new things, we still improve in happiness. The author is also misquoting, or misunderstanding, Kahneman. Kahneman isn't talking at all abo…

>'Kahneman tried to explain the hedonic treadmill via with his own aspiration treadmill. He claims that he not only failed, but the data were opposite to his hypothesis.' https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10056 Uh... what that Edge article you are linking shows is that 'experienced happiness' which he thought would be a better measurement of happiness than life satisfaction is even more immune to your life circums…

I'd rather we not get bogged down in downstream minutia. Instead let's focus on the fallacy in the OP's core argument:

The original Treadmill Theory has been discredited--or at least fallen out of favor. Why? Because the original Treadmill theory is about people returning to the same baseline level of happiness. That's why the originators called it a treadmill - you don't go anywhere / change / improve / make progress etc.

That's why the "adaptation" analogy is preferred. After an initial rush of either happiness or sadness, you do return to a baseline...but this baseline is different that what it was before.

The reality, and summary, is this: nice things do make your life better. At first there's a rush of excitement over your upgrade. When that initial rush goes away, you backtrack a little bit, but still realize a life which is better than what it used to be. The inverse is true for tragedy.

For whatever reason, instead of the succinct description I gave, the author chose a long winded piece, added some charts with questional data, and slapped on a link bait title.

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#83

Post by eggman »

twenty kilograms of high-grade worthless, without devoting my life to writing the anti-statement: "even a treadmill can benefit a person, it is the perspective of the person on the treadmill that matters" - you sweat, you win, no sweat, you lose.

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#84

Post by Govannon »

sliverstorm wrote: post #48
gthtjtkt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm equally confused. I wonder if he meant to say 10,000? My understanding of human history pretty much stops at what we all learned about Egypt in history class, and that time period was ~6,000 years ago IIRC. I have no concept whatsoever of what life was like before then. Were there even "kings" 10,000 years ago?

10,000 years ago suggests Mesopotamia. My weak history knowledge suggests that was the only thing closed to a civilization in that era.

Mesopotamia would have had farming [0], but if you consider the requirements just a group of people, I think there were settlements of sorts back well into the paleolithic. but not kings-with-castles-and-princesses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#85

Post by trgn »

tveita wrote: post #76
nickff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are romanticizing the hunter-gatherer past. Constantly being on the verge of starvation, eating under-ripe fruit, and scavenging rotten meat off week-old corpses was not a good or 'healthy' life.

You may be giving hunter-gatherers too little credit. I think erring on the opposite side of romanticizing is just as bad and risks dehumanizing them. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe "Ian Hodder of Stanford University said, "Göbekli Tepe changes everything". It shows that the erection of monumental complexes was within the capacities of hunter-gatherers and not only of sedentary farming communities as…

Another example is from the contemporary historical accounts and depictions of early Europeans in North America. Plain Indians seemed to have been in very good health. They were taller, had a more varied diet, were in better physical shape, and enjoyed longer lives (save accidents/violence).

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#86

Post by pmarreck »

blakesterz wrote: post #7

>>But sunshine after sunshine is correlated with nothing. >> Because if every day was warm and sunny, you would get use to it. That seems really really wrong. I see they cite studies but it just finally got warm and sunny here after a long cold winter and it feels, well, happy :-) Maybe, just maybe, if it was sunny all the time I'd get used to it. But some days wouldn't be sunny, or I'd travel someplace with no sun,…

I grew up in the Northeast US (New York suburbs) but spent 4 years in California.

People practically do not care about the sun at all in SoCal... because it is always sunny.

It ended up feeling very strange to my brain... I missed the "rhythm" of seasons to mark the passage of time... I felt like I was drifting in a vacation I couldn't escape.

I ended up coming back to NYC :)

And now I appreciate the spring, fall, and winter here more, to boot!

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#87

Post by CPLX »

neogodless wrote: post #6

"The material standard of living of a homeless person in modern-day Manhattan is several dozens of times higher than the wealthiest of kings ten thousand years ago." Can someone explain to me what their definition of "standard of living" is in this context? I get that they might have access to cleaner water, but surely easy access to food prepared for you and having a roof over your head in a snowstorm would sound re…

I think a better starting point would be the definition of standard of living.

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#88

Post by banku_brougham »

banku_brougham wrote: post #27

>The material standard of living of a homeless person in modern-day Manhattan is several dozens of times higher than the wealthiest of kings ten thousand years ago. When your analysis leads you to a conclusion that is obviously false, it is time to reconsider some of your steps along the way.

update: there seems to be disagreement, but no comments. My assertion is that the manhattanite homeless the author references are in the running against Eqyptian pharaohs, and I dispute the quoted claim as obviously false.

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#89

Post by erroneousfunk »

nickff wrote: post #79
virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not personally familiar with the anthropological evidence, but I strongly, strongly doubt that 'constant verge of starvation' accurately characterizes even a small percentage of the past reality.

Constant verge of starvation is a very accurate characterization of the reality of the past. Until the 20th century, economists almost universally used population growth and decline as a measure of agricultural (and overall) productivity, because people would have as many children as they could feed. This measure only works if you are on the verge of famine. A quick glance at anthropological evidence will show you th…

Exactly! I remember reading firsthand accounts from, even 150 years ago, in the US, like Little House on the Prairie, and they all seemed to think it was pretty normal to just "not have food" sometimes. Many many pages were devoted to discussing how long food would last, what they would do when food ran out, how fantastic it was that someone saved the day by killing a food, etc. And they weren't even poor by the standards and culture of the day! They had incredibly advanced (relatively speaking) technology, specialization, and societal support!

I've been downvoted a ton in this thread, but I just think there's so much delusion here about the lifestyle and living standards of prehistoric man...

Re: The Hedonic Treadmill

#90

Post by cubano »

guyzero wrote: post #81
neogodless wrote: post #6

"The material standard of living of a homeless person in modern-day Manhattan is several dozens of times higher than the wealthiest of kings ten thousand years ago." Can someone explain to me what their definition of "standard of living" is in this context? I get that they might have access to cleaner water, but surely easy access to food prepared for you and having a roof over your head in a snowstorm would sound re…

So I'm not sure I agree with the original author but a modern homeless person can wander into a hospital emergency ward and get treated for a variety of diseases that would have killed a medieval king. Assuming we mean 1,000 years ago and not 10,000 years ago which may actually pre-date kings.

One of my favorite little know facts about how much has really changed with medical treatment...

Only 90 years ago, President Calvin Coolidge's 16 year old son died from a foot blister he got while playing lawn tennis on the White House grounds, something that would have probably been easily treated with an OTC anti-bacterial or a quick trip to the doctor nowadays.

We hardly have the get "medieval" to see the radical advancements in health and how we all greatly benefit from it.

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