[and-can]

And even then, is 7% supposed to be a little or a lot? They say "hundreds of hours of dieting & exercising" but really that only affects an hour a day, maybe? I'd say that if I could spend 1 hour a day and get a 7% gain in happiness, it probably is worth it.

And perhaps there are other activities that require 1 hour that result in a 7% increase. Say: reading, socializing, writing. Then you've got 4 hours a day and get a 1.07^4 = 1.31 or 31% increase in happiness.

Isn't that GOOD? I'd say that's AWESOME.

[metaphorm]

I find that actual metric here to be the most dubious part of the whole argument. I can easily understand making qualitative claims about happiness and maybe even some of the arguments presented by the author are good ones, on a qualitative basis.

But trying to quantify this is just so bogus. What do they think they're even measuring? They're just making statistical claims about questionaire results as far as I can tell. The author doesn't qualify that nearly enough. He is treating this like there's some kind of discrete quanta of happiness. "My current happy level is 7.453 kiloJoys" or something like that. Its just weird.

[SonicSoul]

well the article seems to imply that 7% is low: "by the colossal 7%"

and there is this:

But that same survey found that those with a low level of education were 47% more likely to be the happiest than those with a high level of education.13

so low level of education makes almost 7x more impact than diet + exercising combined. something is seriously wrong with this happiness calculus

[aianus]

> so low level of education makes almost 7x more impact than diet + exercising combined. something is seriously wrong with this happiness calculus

"Ignorance is bliss" is a pretty old idiom; who's to say it's not rooted in some truth?

[daodedickinson]

Check out The True Beleiver by Eric Hoffer or Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich for some explanations for this long observed effect.

Schooling trained myself and my best friends to expect to be able to use what we learned, even though there were no roles in society for us. We are national merit finalists, calculus users, programmers, 99th percentile GRE scorers... one friend is nearly homeless. Another bags groceries. The best off has a programming job only because his father was higher up in the company. I spray herbicides and pesticides and feed cattle and do whatever I am asked and more at our family veterinary clinic and on our family farm. I am extremely lucky. But I feel intensely guilty that I am not using anything I learned at university. No one owes me anything. But I sacrificed and suffered so much for academic success, debating championships, math team and programming victories, and it has never paid me back with a livelihood and now I am emotionally and energetically burnt out before ever landing an entry-level programming job. I can do all the Cracking the Coding Interview questions. I've never ran into anything in CS I couldn't understand. I'm just very emotionally fragile when it comes to interviews due to being on the autism spectrum and feeling so abjectified. If I had not been so successful in school I would not feel so terribly guilty about my failure at life. I would like a romantic relationship and a family. But I would feel guilty and to ashamed starting one without a career to provide for at least private schooling or more likely homeschooling for my kids. But I am unable to escape my social bankruptcy or move out of my parent's basement. Life seems to complicated and I feel so far behind in non-school skills I feel trapped. I feel I will never gain the prestige to feel desirable enough to make friends much less a wife. I come up with software ideas but I get so depressed at the likelihood of their failure that I feel guilty working on them (and yet guilty not working on them). Education causes higher expectations. Needing more people at university for social reasons has made them so easy that they no longer discipline people enough for success. More importantly, there simply aren't enough role slots people trained to expect those roles. Please give me counsel if you can. I want a mentor or someone to apprentice with so badly. My parents love me but they are very dysfunctional. They have no friends either. I had a genius uncle who got top marks in school, made all sorts of interesting gadgets, could solve a Rubik's cube in seconds... he ended up a derelict and I am so worried I will end up like him even though it might be a self-fulfilling fear... I think he is too. He wanted to see a game I made but I've never gotten one polished to the point I felt I could share it. My closest friends are all failing to launch, too, so I have no role models. And I am down to three people from undergrad that I can still talk to (through infrequent texting). I want to be able to spend real time with someone who has things figured out about a bit so that my mirror neurons might hurt me rather than harm me.

[throwitaway_sam]

Been there, done that, found a way out of it. PM me.

[daodedickinson]

I might if there was a PM option.

[tacon]

If you add a publicly viewable email address to your profile, then anyone that might want to help you can contact you privately.