Are we happier when we spend more time with others?

> I doesn't matter if it's quality time

Does it matter with whom?

How about people openly disrespecting you under the guise of friendship? (I've seen this happen thousands of times, never understood why people tolerate it)

How about backstabbers? How about people envious of you?

My point is - does it really have the same effect on you, regardless of the quality of relationship?

Of course you're correct that these also had higher, and probably much higher, mortality rates. But what matters is overall impact. Let's say that x% fewer people die in childbirth today. What would that mean? What you'd start by doing is seeing the cause of death for a large sample of people in times past. So let's say you look at 100,000 people. How many would have had mortality caused by childbirth? It'd be extremely negligible and almost certainly in the single digits if not fractional. Keep in mind you're looking at all deaths, not just deaths of women who gave birth. And so that x% improvement results in a comparably small gain - childbirth being safer does not have a major quantitative impact because its rate as a general killer was, and is, very low.

What would be killing people? All the way up until the mid 20th century famine was one of the biggest causes of death. Famine and related issues all the way up until the mid 20th century was a huge killer. For instance in the early 1900s around 27 million people died in famines with a world population of about 1.7 billion. [1] That's 1.6% of the entire world dying of famine in one year! Now go back 3000 years with all the difficulties that entails.

And then consider things like food poisoning. We consider it, as a cause of mortality, mostly eradicated in the developed world. Yet it was such a pernicious killer that "eradicated" translates to 3,000 deaths from foodborn disease per year in the United States alone [2]. And now once again, go backwards in time to imagine how radically worse things would have been. To give that number some contrast consider measels. The vaccination was introduced in 1963. In the decade leading up to the immunization 400-500 died per year from it. [3] In other words foodborn disease is a bigger killer today than measels was before there was a vaccination for it. This isn't some anti-vax thing, but trying to give perspective to how and why people have died throughout the ages.

[1] - http://www.thegwpf.com/the-era-of-great-famines-is-over/

[2] - https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html

[3] - https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html

>In my experience no human is ok with being socially isolated for a long period of time

Citation needed.

There was an article on HN a couple of weeks back about a guy who spent 20+ years alone in the woods and was perfectly happy for it.

Once a month seems about right, and for me it's not the same group of friends necessarily.

My wife and I have some couple friends and our schedules are hardest to align. (Kids, work, family time). And then we both have some single friends without kids, with which we can just choose any time and it will probably work to meet up.

That's just part of getting older and starting a family I suppose. Priorities shift a bit :)

I wanted to show how much we tend to condition ourselves. I don't have the intention to make fun here.

It's good you are asking about the how - please see once you think "I am " - this is what will determine your whole behavior on many levels and this is what you will become in many ways. Try to be conscious through the day and see every decision you are making - is it in some way based on the idea of yourself? A simple pattern of a mind "I will (not) do that because I am (not) a ...".

One way to go beyond this is to see clearly - every single moment of your life you are not "somebody" defined. Instead according to the situation around you become somebody. In the office you become an office worker and behave in one way, at home you become a family member and behave another way, at a party with friends it is again another way. Sometimes you can even forget to "be someone" and just be - for example in moments of great joy or intense activity.

Just see if you can observe this through your day - you should see yourself that your personality is flexible, it is not set in stone. See if you can find where does it come from, what defines it - I promise you this discovery will be one of the most wonderful things happened to you.

This is as much as I can give you via a text message.