

Achieving Fame, Wealth And Beauty Are Psychological Dead Ends, Study Says - villageidiot
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090514111402.htm

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wallflower
> The findings in this study support Self-Determination Theory, a well-
> established theory of human motivation developed by two of the paper's
> authors, Deci and fellow University psychologist Richard Ryan.

"well-established" makes me think that this article functions more as a PR
piece for SDT. However, I've never heard of SDT befor reading this article,
and I find SDT interesting as it seems to be a functional lens through which
to study basic human needs - like the need for relationships.

"SDT suggests that there are three basic psychological needs: autonomy,
competence, and relatedness that underlie growth and development"

"[Self-Determination Theory] begins with the assumption that people are active
organisms, with innate tendencies toward psychological growth and development,
who strive to master ongoing challenges and to integrate their experiences
into a coherent sense of self. This natural human tendency does not operate
automatically, however, but instead requires ongoing nutriments and supports
from the social environment in order to function effectively."

<http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/theory.php>

------
russell
"I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better."

\-- Mae West

~~~
benkant
I always thought it was Woody Allen that said that. Don't tell me he stole it
and took credit for it?

~~~
russell
I've always attributed it to Mae West, but I googled a bit and found it also
attributed to Beatrice Kaufman, Sophie Tucker, an a host of others.
[http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/ive_...](http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/ive_been_rich_and_ive_been_poor_rich_is_better/)

In any case I think they all beat out Woodie Allen. Ne was no more than a baby
at the time.

------
Eliezer
Reading the article, it sounds like the interpretation of results could have
been pretty heavily cooked. With someone this hot for a prior theory it's
important to know exactly what experimental methods they used and exactly what
they found. Article's pretty short on that.

~~~
Dilpil
The irony of social sciences: they demand the most rigor, and are given the
least.

------
anamax
Everything other than immortality is a dead end.

~~~
Dilpil
...and no ones looked at immortality yet.

------
patrickg-zill
Book of Ecclesiastes, nuff said.

~~~
patio11
Wow, I think you just went meta-Ecclesiastes!

What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is
new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, "See, this is new!" has
already existed in the ages that preceded us.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

~~~
Eliezer
Poetic but blatantly false.

Actually, you really wonder how Ecclesiastes managed to get included in the
Bible, considering that at this point the Earth was supposed to be four
thousand years old or whatever. And yet even 4.5 billion years isn't old
enough for everything to have happened, not even close. Aren't exponential
possibility spaces wonderful?

~~~
ahoyhere
If you take it to mean human nature and the completely cyclical patterns of
human behavior, then it's most certainly correct. That's how I've always
interpreted it.

~~~
davidmathers
Verse 9 is about behavior:

    
    
      What has been will be again, 
           what has been done will be done again
    

Verse 10 is about things:

    
    
      Is there anything of which one can say, 
           "Look! This is something new"?
    

I think verse 9 is false. Remember one of the ways Solomon got his pleasure:
"I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my
house." That's the only thing I can think of though.

~~~
ahoyhere
Why does the case of Solomon's slaves negate verse 9?

There has always been slavery, and there is still slavery today, and lots of
explicitly sexual slavery too.

------
ellyagg
And yet the rich economies of today, the ones that support, e.g., scientific
research, were mostly built by people pursuing material goals.

~~~
ellyagg
Let me put it another way:

1\. Benjamin Franklin wrote that when colonial era children were taken by
Indian tribes and were later found again, they usually didn't want to come
back. Their lives were too easy and carefree now.

2\. Egyptian society didn't change for thousands of years. The weather was
mild and the Nile would flood every year, providing them plenty of easy food.
There was no need to strive for anything.

If happiness is the most important virtue to optimize in society, then I'm
forced to believe that pre-colonial American Indian society and ancient
Egyptian society were far better than modern societies. But I don't believe
that.

Believing in happiness as supreme is a first principle. You can't prove it,
you have to accept it as a given and the rest of your philosophy descends from
that. Personally, I don't accept this assumption. I think happiness is
important, but I think other things like beauty and truth are just as
important.

~~~
apsec112
Egyptians and Native Americans certainly had happy times, but I don't think
anyone then or now would trade that life for ours. If you lived more than a
few hundred years ago, your life would be, in all probability:

\- If you are male, your main job is to do hard, backbreaking labor, six or
seven days out of the week, all day long, from sunup to sundown. If you're
sick and can't work, you _might_ be able to call on a relative or friend to
help, otherwise you're screwed; there's no medical care, no life insurance, no
disability insurance and no paid vacation. Every so often, someone will come
along, hand you a sword, and tell you to go die for the Emperor; if you aren't
killed in battle, it's quite likely that you'll die of disease or starvation
hundreds of miles from home.

\- If you are female, you basically have no rights; you are legally the
property of your husband, who may have three or ten or twenty wives, and are
required to do whatever he says. Your main job is to take care of your
children; since there is no birth control, you will probably have ten or more,
of whom a good percentage will die before their first birthday due to the sky-
high infant mortality rates.

\- And, of course, in any case, there is no electricity, no telephones, no
televisions, no air conditioning, and no computers. Running water and books
are, with a few exceptions like imperial Rome, luxuries available only to the
rich and privileged. Depending on where/when you are, you might have decent
sanitation, or your streets might be literally overflowing with sewage.

\- If you _want_ to live like this, for whatever reason, you still _can_. Go
out into the middle of nowhere and purchase a plot of land (such land is
generally worthless). Build a house on it, farm it for food and make all your
tools yourself. Strangely enough, most people who talk about the virtues of
the simple life never do this (although a few do, and I admire them for their
non-hypocrisy).

~~~
philwelch
"Every so often, someone will come along, hand you a sword, and tell you to go
die for the Emperor; if you aren't killed in battle, it's quite likely that
you'll die of disease or starvation hundreds of miles from home."

But less likely than dying at home on the farm, at least in Rome.

"your husband, who may have three or ten or twenty wives"

In which case your husband is probably rich, powerful, and influential, and
you share a measure of luxury. Most men in polygamous cultures only have/had
one wife because they can only afford to support one wife.

"If you want to live like this, for whatever reason, you still can. Go out
into the middle of nowhere and purchase a plot of land (such land is generally
worthless). Build a house on it, farm it for food and make all your tools
yourself."

There's a marked difference between living in a primitive community and living
as a primitivist hermit.

------
ilitirit
I think the keyword here is "psychological". If you train yourself to control
your mental state you can suffer all sorts of physical afflictions but
psychologically you can still be as happy as ever.

I used to think that balance was the key, but after some consideration I'm
undecided. If spending all your energy on training yourself to be happy
actually makes you happy despite your physical well-being, why would you need
balance?

~~~
zackattack
My friend had a good quote: "if you're trying to be happy, you've already
lost." Happiness comes from satisfaction with the present moment.

------
DavidSJ
Correlation ≠ Causality

------
radu_floricica
There are a few sites I came to avoid on principle. nytimes always has very
well written and interesting articles, but with no long-term value. And
science daily... well, there is very little science in there. They sound good,
but they also lack meat, and honestly they're not that well written.

