Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Be Happy

lesswrong.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 222 posts

Re: How to Be Happy

#51

Post by pkorzeniewski »

adamzerner wrote: post #35
npsimons wrote: post #27

Extroversion is among the best predictors of happiness, Well of course it is! No one ever meets the shy happy people because they never go out!

The assumption is that the researchers accounted for any sort of selection bias in who participates in the study. But that's an interesting point; maybe that assumption needs to be questioned further.

Maybe extrovert people just don't want to admit they're unhappy, because there's such a high social pressure to be happy all the time - people don't want to spend time with unhappy people, so everyone pretends they're happy. Introverts on the other hand just don't care :)

Re: How to Be Happy

#52

Post by id »

maaku wrote: post #49
id wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So annoying 3^^^3 people "for a fraction of a second, barely enough to make them notice" is worse than horribly torturing a single person for 50 years? Keep in mind that the 3^^^3 dust specks are spread across 3^^^3 people and their annoyance can't be simply added together.

> and their annoyance can't be simply added together Why not? EDIT: Serious question. If I save two lives that is twice as good as saving one, right? Why is this situation different?

It's easier for two people to cope with one bad experience each than for one guy to cope with two bad experiences.

Re: How to Be Happy

#53

Post by lucisferre »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #10

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of…

It's funny but this article is actually the strongest evidence of cult behaviour. Teaching you how to be "happy" is pretty much the initial selling point of almost every cult out there. Just walk by any Scientology building.

Also from the wiki you linked [1]

> Some people familiar with the LessWrong memeplex have suffered serious psychological distress after contemplating basilisk-like ideas — even when they're fairly sure intellectually that it's a silly problem.[5] The notion is taken sufficiently seriously by some LessWrong posters that they try to work out how to erase evidence of themselves so a future AI can't reconstruct a copy of them to torture

Wow either that article is hyperbolizing this or... wow.

[1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#The_LessWrong...

[5] (reference from the quote) http://lesswrong.com/lw/fq3/open_thread_december_115_2012/80...

Re: How to Be Happy

#54

Post by [deleted] »

maaku wrote: post #49
id wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So annoying 3^^^3 people "for a fraction of a second, barely enough to make them notice" is worse than horribly torturing a single person for 50 years? Keep in mind that the 3^^^3 dust specks are spread across 3^^^3 people and their annoyance can't be simply added together.

> and their annoyance can't be simply added together Why not? EDIT: Serious question. If I save two lives that is twice as good as saving one, right? Why is this situation different?

[deleted]

Re: How to Be Happy

#55

Post by maaku »

id wrote: post #52
maaku wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and their annoyance can't be simply added together Why not? EDIT: Serious question. If I save two lives that is twice as good as saving one, right? Why is this situation different?

It's easier for two people to cope with one bad experience each than for one guy to cope with two bad experiences.

Assumed independence. You are talking about a strictly different setup. Assume that these individuals don't know each other.

Re: How to Be Happy

#56

Post by thebrokencube »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #51
adamzerner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption is that the researchers accounted for any sort of selection bias in who participates in the study. But that's an interesting point; maybe that assumption needs to be questioned further.

Maybe extrovert people just don't want to admit they're unhappy, because there's such a high social pressure to be happy all the time - people don't want to spend time with unhappy people, so everyone pretends they're happy. Introverts on the other hand just don't care :)

I tend to agree with you. I find that certain people I know who are extroverts always seem happy, but you spend enough time with them and get to know them, it's more or less a facade and they're not any more or less happy than others. Just like anything else I don't believe this to be universal, but it may be more common than advertised.

Re: How to Be Happy

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #10

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of…

[deleted]

Re: How to Be Happy

#59

Post by manifoldlife »

hliyan wrote: post #3

I've reduced it to a series of equations: Happiness = Perceived Actual Life / Expected Life --- (1) where, Perceived Actual Life = Perception * Actual Life ----- (2) and in most cases, Expected Life ∝ Perceived Life of Others ------------- (3) where, Perceived Life of Others = Perception * Others' Actual Life -- (4) and finally, Actual Life ∝ (1 / Happiness) * Skill * Circumstance - (5) The most success I had was in…

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?

Re: How to Be Happy

#60

Post by shawnz »

maaku wrote: post #55
id wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier for two people to cope with one bad experience each than for one guy to cope with two bad experiences.

Assumed independence. You are talking about a strictly different setup. Assume that these individuals don't know each other.

I don't think he is making the assumption that they know each other.

Each individual has a tolerance of what they can comfortably cope with. If 3^^^3 people were all experiencing a pain that is below that tolerance, nobody would be prevented from happiness. However in the other situation, the tortured individual clearly would be.

Post reply on HN