
Rare, profound positive events won't make you happy, but lots of little ones will - bd
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2008/11/rare-profound-positive-events-wont-make.html
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lutorm
"Fooled by Randomness" talks about the same phenomenon: People are more likely
to pursue an investment strategy that demonstrates common, small increases in
value while exposing them to rare, large decreases over one with common, small
decreases in value while exposing them to rare, large increases, because it's
psychologically difficult to persist while seeing bad results every day even
if the magnitude of those bad results is so small so as to be inconsequential.

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sciolizer
Sounds like a good philosophy on which to build a casino. If only people would
be willing to bet variable amounts.

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hugh
Like most "happiness research", this seems to rely on dodgy methodology and be
aimed at some sort of political agenda. Ooh, and here it is:

 _So what are the policy implications for this new research. The researchers
said single-shot events such as a tax cut will probably have little impact on
people's happiness. By contrast, "policies that lead to small but repeated
gains are likely to succeed."_

Well, for starters, who says that a tax cut is a "single shot event"? A tax
cut would give me more money every single month, which I could then use to buy
more of those "lots of little events".

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lutorm
Yeah, that sounds weird. (Maybe they were thinking of the single-shot "tax
rebates" that have been given out?) But which methodology did you think was
dodgy?

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hugh
Well, I think the main problem is that running up to people and asking them
how "happy" they are isn't a very good measure of their overall well-being.

