[judofyr]

> Wait, what? Why would self-reported feelings not be taken as strong evidence?

Because you might be stuck in a local maxima that's close to your global minima. I've been reading "Why We Sleep", and while I don't have the citations here at the moment he mentions that one of the tricky things with sleep deprivation is that people are often not very aware of it themselves. Your body gets used to the new, lower, level and thinks that it's normal.

It should also be mentioned that most people don't try to distinguish between correlation and causation, and as such it can be hard to draw any conclusions. Imagine a person who reports that "I'm so happy when I drink alcohol", but it turns out that he has no social contact (e.g. working at night, sleeping through the day; no friends) outside of the bar setting, and it's actually the social element that he most desires.

I guess it depends on what you mean by the word "evidence", but I wouldn't really say that his self-reported feelings show any strong evidence that alcohol makes him happy.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep