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

World Happiness Report 2026

worldhappiness.report

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 116 posts

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#101

Post by mvdtnz »

myth_drannon wrote: post #13
alstonite wrote: post #2

It’s interesting to see a country’s internal rank of its own happiness against how I would rank them using my worldview. Israel for example seems like a place that would be fairly unhappy right now given world events, but they rank quite highly. Saudi Arabia also sticks out as unexpected. It seems in the media I hear about their government being quite oppressive (especially against women), so seeing them just above t…

It had a huge drop in positive emotions due to the war with Gaza in 2023. Actually, negative emotions were higher than positive which is sad and expected. But the index includes many metrics that don't change rapidly like GDP, life expactancy.. so any short conflict will not have outsized effect.

> But the index includes many metrics that don't change rapidly like GDP, life expactancy..

No it does not. It's one question without regard to GDP, life expectancy or anything else.

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#102

Post by nradov »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #74
bigtones wrote: post #8

FYI: This world happiness report is entirely based on asking just one obtuse question, which does not even have the word happiness in the actual question: Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you…

I mean.. even if I was a bit worse off financially, if the leadership in the country was even borderline normal, I would give a much higher rating than currently.

Do you mean normal like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Richard M. Nixon, and George W. Bush?

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#103

Post by nradov »

alstonite wrote: post #2

It’s interesting to see a country’s internal rank of its own happiness against how I would rank them using my worldview. Israel for example seems like a place that would be fairly unhappy right now given world events, but they rank quite highly. Saudi Arabia also sticks out as unexpected. It seems in the media I hear about their government being quite oppressive (especially against women), so seeing them just above t…

Do the Saudi Arabia numbers count all of the foreign workers who are brought in to do the dirty jobs for low wages and treated like dogs? Or are only citizens counted?

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#106

Post by cityofdelusion »

9rx wrote: post #73
erelong wrote: post #44

I think social media is being wrongly made in to a scapegoat Rather, social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at, of not having meaningful work or volunteer opportunities, of lacking certain other things that may have existed in the past. Social media offers a new engaging experiment that fills the void of some of these things that don't exist…

> social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at I see all kinds of active third spaces, but never any young people in them. I get that it is hard to bootstrap now. Trying to convince a 20 year old that they should hang out with a 70 year old to get the ball rolling for more 20 year olds to show up is not an easy sell, but when I was 20 (just bef…

You’re 100% right that third places didn’t go anywhere. I do volunteer work and fact is, teens have incredibly short attention spans now due to instant media in their pockets. On the rare occasions I get a volunteer that isn’t a grey beard, the young person (usually dragged to the place by an adult) sits in a corner on their phone. Most put in absolute minimum effort so they can get on their device asap.

The kids aren’t dumb or uninteresting or anything like that, they are just plain addicted to phones. The rare volunteer kid that puts 100% effort in is usually a homeschool type with no electronic devices or someone in the top 1% of their class or something like that.

The attention economy is real, and it’s dominated by phones and by those that were born in it.

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#107

Post by emptysongglass »

throw0101d wrote: post #20
bigtones wrote: post #8

FYI: This world happiness report is entirely based on asking just one obtuse question, which does not even have the word happiness in the actual question: Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you…

The Howtown channel had a video on this last year, 'One weird metric picks the world's "happiest country"': * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1--c2r8HE They link to their sources: * https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFO-3Sq5-rorCWBIKwuR-Spk... Specifically the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale ("Cantril Ladder") is used: * https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/2/9/what-is-cantril... * https://news.gallup.c…

This is one of those things that just is not true, no matter what sort of evidence is presented, because actual humans can go walk outside their door and see it isn't.

Denmark has ranked as one of the happiest countries for years running, but, Dane here, we hoover up antidepressants like it was our breakfast. There are also deep cultural factors at play that make Danes more likely to mask that everything is fine when it isn't. We have an extremely high incidence of cheating on our partners, which, surprise, comes from a talent for deception, both toward self and others, and we are extremely emotionally avoidant, which results in our nationally very high rate of alcohol consumption and alcoholism.

These happiness indexes are a complete sham and don't observe the full spectrum that goes into how cultures present themselves versus lived reality.

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#108

Post by dyauspitr »

Archit3ch wrote: post #67

As a foreigner living in Finland, people here don't necessarily have more, but they behave like the proverbial fisherman. An ambitious CEO moves to a small coastal town, living right on the beach to "optimize his lifestyle." Every evening, he sees a local fisherman sitting on his deck, playing guitar and watching the sunset with his family. After a week, the CEO approaches the fisherman and says, "You know, if you sp…

I guess the difference is play the guitar all day instead of just in the evening.

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#109

Post by drukenemo »

YorickPeterse wrote: post #98

Considering the state of The Netherlands over the last two decades, I can't help but feel this report is straight up bullshit. The only way I can see The Netherlands rank this high is by only asking two people and some sheep in the middle of nowhere.

Besides the housing problems, what would you say are the biggest developments in the Netherlands over two decades?

Re: World Happiness Report 2026

#110

Post by rightbyte »

lores wrote: post #34
jamilton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An obvious issue with the metaphor that comes to mind is that if you consider yourself to have a pretty good life, to be overall happy and satisfied, but you think it's possible to have an objectively much better life, then you'd rank yourself relatively low. And vice versa, if you think your life sucks but it could be much worse you'd rank yourself relatively high.

Same problem as rating your pain on the pain scale: is 10 the worst pain I've experienced, or the worst I can imagine? Because I've got a... very vivid imagination. And still, that's the best we can do. I blame an imperfect universe.

No it is not the best we can do. Like, just ask "are you happy?" instead of some convoluted scale.

Like, if there is no consensus on what the scale means the answers will be too culturaly dependend and random between individuals.

In my experience doing surveys "was the food good?" after say a conference is way easiee to interpret than some scale answers.

Post reply on HN