
What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy - okket
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-01/what-we-want-doesn-t-always-make-us-happy
======
cadence-
We are unhappy with our wants, because we are being overpromised on how much
happiness those wants will deliver. Advertising and politicians are probably
the worst offenders here. We desire and pursue certain wants (big house,
luxurious car, tropical vacation) only to later get disappointed with their
quality and utility once we have them. Then we report in the form that we are
unhappy because we don’t use the two extra bedrooms that cost extra to heat,
that luxurious car costs fortune in insurance and fuel, and the tropical
vacation turned out to be a nightmare with roaches, bedbugs and salmonella
outbreak.

~~~
alexashka
Humans are not made to be happy. That's the one and only 'disappointment' to
tattoo onto your brain, so that you don't spend your life thinking a utopia
aka engineering happiness is possible or a good idea.

People are 'unhappy' because they're not at the top of the social hierarchy.
The people at the top are not happy because everyone wants a piece of them and
they get no peace.

It's all bullshit. Just live your life.

Only my opinion of course :)

~~~
refurb
_“Humans are not made to be happy”_

This is really important.

We didn’t become the dominant species on this planet because contentment was
easy to find.

Humans are designed to always want more, even if they have more than anyone
alive ever has.

Understanding this can lead to contentment because whenever you find yourself
unhappy, it’s much easier to be ok with it if you realize that’s the natural
state of being.

~~~
beenBoutIT
*Non-happy or neutral is the default state of being. Unhappy is the opposite of happy while non-happy is just 'not happy'.

~~~
bredren
Yes. It is great to feel happy. But also great to be unhappy (in measure) The
true purpose is simply to live and experience life to its fullest extent.
Chasing or expecting happiness as normal is a direct path to misery.

Anyone interested in learning more about this idea should look up Saghguru.

------
ksherlock
"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get".

~~~
p1mrx
"I'm gonna soak up the sun ..."

------
temp129038
I wonder what the default emotion is of most other creatures, specifically
other mammals? To me, happiness is just a signal, just like sadness, anger,
etc. It's your body telling you something is "good" or "bad" but isn't
necessarily a natural feeling to be had 24/7.

~~~
im3w1l
Well treated pets seem to be happy nearly their whole life. By that I don't
mean constant ecstacy, but on the positive side of feelings.

I'm glad you asked the question it made me look at things from a new angle.

~~~
gehwartzen
If I look at my cat he seems happy having: Endless time to sleep/think,
affection from his feline and human family, reasonably comfortable shelter,
steady supply of food/water, sunshine, the freedom to go outside and explore.
Seemingly little desire to turn on my computer/TV (outside of a brief fleeting
curiosity), moving into my neighbors house, colonizing mars, listening to the
news about starving cats in other parts of the world/city, or doing any "work"
beyond directly helping him achieve the items on the first list. If I'm being
honest that probably sums up the necessities for my own personal happiness.

------
another-dave
"Economists and other happiness researchers consistently find that longer
commutes are associated with unhappiness. Yet people still pay quite a lot to
live in far-flung exurbs."

This feels like an over simplification — the article makes it sound like the
individuals don't weigh the benefits correctly.

Anecdotally know a few people in this position who do this because they have
to get up earlier but their kids grow up beside woods & heaths rather than in
suburbs/city. So you've people doing something which makes themselves
unhappier because it makes their family happier (in theory) which they get
happiness / satisfaction from.

------
dooglius
If it's possible to desire things without happiness, what is the evolutionary
rationale for happiness at all? Maybe what we call "happiness" is only one
type of positive feedback among many of which we might be less aware.

~~~
bobthechef
If a person embraces an intellectually wimpy evolutionistic metaphysics versus
merely evolution as such as a means of explaining e.g. the diversity of life,
then none of this really has an answer as there is truly no up, down, right,
wrong, etc. Evolutionistic metaphysics begins with the presupposition that
everything is purposeless and meaningless and so precludes the possibility of
happiness as even a real thing.

However, if a person manages to finally free himself from that bogus, high
school caliber metaphysics and recover telos, you will stand a chance of
coming to understand happiness in at least eudaimonic terms, that is to say,
as the same as completion.

~~~
Bakary
Can you explain how to recover "telos"?

------
neonate
From PG about this article:
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1134755140802633730](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1134755140802633730)

~~~
qznc
Is the motto of Y combinator still "Make something people want"?
[http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
Though with adtech, it's more "make people want something".

------
bubblewrap
I don't think economists really have such a narrow idea of utility. Usually it
is applied in abstract models, where utility is predefined (like a lottery
where you can win money, and the amount you win is used as the utility - no
need to consider how happy it might make the theoretical player).

For the real world, I think evolutionary aspects have to be taken into
account. A single actor may not act rational, but in the long term, the actors
making the rational choice will prevail by the power of evolution. So rational
choices will be made in the long run, even if it may not even be deliberation
of the actors.

Also, don't forget that happiness research itself may also be wrong. I think
the classic about people without children supposedly being less happy than
people with children points in that direction. By the standard research
methodology, watching Netflix on the couch all the time would probably make
people the most happy.

------
FabHK
> More egalitarian economists will tend to value the utility of the poor and
> disadvantaged more than the utility of the wealthy, but fundamentally it’s
> still about giving people what they desire.

That's not true, I think. What egalitarian economists would argue is that an
extra dollar for the poor and disadvantaged buys a lot _more utility_ than an
extra dollar for the wealthy, and therefore (because said economist values
their utility _equally)_ extra _dollars_ should go to the poor and
disadvantaged.

(Though most economists shy away from interpersonal utility comparisons, which
is what gives rise to the concept of pareto optimality.)

------
Bakary
There's a passage from Existential Comics[0] that is relevant:

>Utilitarianism, as described by philosophers such as Bentham, Mill, and
Singer, is roughly the idea that morality should be based purely on what
causes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In his novel,
Notes From the Underground, Dostoyevsky made a strong objection to this style
of ethics, imploring us to imagine a world where Utilitarianism as a project
was finished. The perfect world was created and it was known what would make
us the most happy. He said at this point, the human would rebel, and reject
the system. He claimed that if there was a single value that was held most
high - human freedom, then no moral system could be perfect, because it would
rob us of that freedom. He claimed that if happiness was indeed the ultimate
goal of life, then all of human history has been a mistake. That is to say, if
you observe individual humans in history, they have seldom sought out
happiness for themselves. They have instead sought out only what they sought
out. What they desired was merely what they desired, and often it had nothing
to do with happiness, be it art, ambition, conquest, to have children, or
merely spite - what they wanted to do was what they wanted to do, and the
further explanation of their desire making them "happy" was superfluous, and
unrelated to what their desire to be free.

[0]
[http://existentialcomics.com/comic/236](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/236)

------
tlb
Articles about this usually focus on frivolous wants, like Facebook likes. But
it's also true of more worthwhile wants. If you want to cure cancer, and
eventually succeed, you won't be any happier after an initial rush. But that
doesn't mean you shouldn't be driven by such wants.

~~~
0815test
Research actually suggests that memorable experiences do yield sustained
happiness, whereas transient ones or simply material goods do not. A handful
of Facebook likes would probably not make you very happy in the longer run,
but having your cure for cancer reach top spot on HN just might.

~~~
FabHK
If I cured cancer (and I won't), I'd want an obituary in The Economist (at the
apposite time), not make front page on HN.

~~~
beenBoutIT
IRL if you cured cancer almost no one would believe you and it would take
decades before the treatment gained enough anecdotal steam to get officially
recognized and FDA approved.

------
okket
See also previous discussion about the paper from 3 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863)
(31 comments)

------
namelosw
This is probably somehow coded in human's mechanism. People's happiness and
sadness are relative, and it's all dynamic. Most of those who won a really big
lottery don't last happy as long as they thought. Most of those who lost their
legs will accept the truth after a while and find it's bad but it's not all
that bad.

This makes some people keep pursuing higher goals, while some other people
find to get out of the loop is to enjoy their life right now.

------
isacikgoz
Despite the fact that Bentham is the first name that comes into mind when
speaking on utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill pushed the boundaries of it and
actually addressed what utility is and how can it be measured. As article
implies, the utility of a thing should be measured for each individual so that
the person extract more happiness from it. I strongly suggest to read Mill’s
utilitarianism if someone is looking more information about this topic.

------
mbrock
“Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their
happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug —
in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using
it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people
use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than
the pursuit of happiness.”

This is a good point.

------
agumonkey
About happiness:

I'm out of years of mental, physical, joblessness issues. I just took a newb
car mechanic position. It was exhausting, sometimes problematic (difficult to
mesh programmer precision fetishism with mechanics regular brute force
approach)... but there's a deep bliss in forgetting what I/you want and just
do things. The balance is subtle.

------
starchild_3001
"One of these things is Facebook, by far the world's largest social-networking
site. In a recent paper, economists Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah
Eichmeyer and Matthew Gentzkow investigated how much money they had to pay
Facebook users in order to get them to deactivate the Facebook app for one or
two months. They found that the median amount was $100, and the average was
$180 (the latter being larger because a few users really loved Facebook).

This suggests that Facebook, which is free to use, generates a huge amount of
utility — more than $370 billion a year in consumer surplus in the U.S. alone.
This bolsters the argument of those who believe that free digital services
have added a lot of unmeasured output to the global economy.

But Allcott et al. also found that the people who deactivated Facebook as part
of the experiment were happier afterward, reporting higher levels of life
satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety. The change was modest
but significant — equal to about 25 to 40 percent of the beneficial effect
typically reported for psychotherapy.

Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their
happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug —
in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using
it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people
use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than
the pursuit of happiness."

Another possibility is that your analysis is completely illogical and
therefore wrong. People who quit facebook are self-selected. Their experiences
doesn't necessarily reflect those who remain on the platform.

------
StacyC
As I’ve gotten older I find that my wants are fewer, and the list of things I
truly care about has gotten much shorter. I’m happy with what I have now and
grateful for the basic things (family, health, work I enjoy).

Consider making as many good experiences as you can, rather than accumulating
more things.

------
bobthechef
If you want the wrong things, for the wrong reasons, to the wrong degree, etc,
then duh, of course you'll be unhappy. We are the heirs of thousands of years
of thought on the subject and yet we walk around oblivious to millennia of
wisdom. WE know better, of course, because we came later.

An obnoxious dogma of liberalism (as in Lockean philosophy, not as in liberal
institutions -- a VERY important distinction as the latter does not require
the former) seems to be that any desire is an axiomatically and unquestionable
good always, with no reference to human nature and what human nature tells us
is good. (I won't name the recent manifestations of the late stage liberal
freak show.) Human nature is what allows us to determine whether a desire is
disordered or not such a pica, pedophilia, or zoophilia, though as the full
consequences of liberalism manifest, I would not be surprised if these will
eventually be "discredited" as bigoted, narrow-minded, and hateful cultural
and social constructions. Ideology, as always, is impervious and blind to
reason, so I will no doubt be downvoted given how deeply the poison of Lockean
thought has penetrated into our culture. When hedonism has possessed a man,
there is not even the slightest willingness to consider the truth, and if he
were to witness it, he would likely fail to recognize it because of how
blinded he's become by the mindless pursuit of pleasure.

If you want to learn something about happiness, we have to look to insights of
the classical tradition and not the lunacy that seized the world not 20
minutes ago. Pieper, for example, has written an excellent book on the four
cardinal virtues. He's very lucid and speaks directly to the understanding.
That's just the beginning.

~~~
seem_2211
You're probably going to be very unpopular with your opinion, but I think
you're on to something. The Old Testament has the verse "The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand
it?"(Jeremiah 17:9).

Basically the polar opposite of our modern society & every message we're sold.
Christianity/ Atheism/ consumerism - whatever belief system you subscribe to
has an arm that basically boils down to "do what makes you happy."

I'm not trying to get down on our current generation. If this truth was summed
up in the Bible (regardless of your thoughts on the book), it's clearly a
deeper reflection of human behavior. Happiness is hard.

------
cyberjunkie
Some things, very few things are genuinely wanted and we value them all along.

The rest that follows, not so much. Wanting to want is the fun, not getting
what you want. Once you have it, you want something else, then the pursuit of
wanting it.

------
afpx
The best you can do is inform people about known risks and benefits, as best
as you can. For instance, I smoke, and I know that it’s bad, but I do it
anyway because I know that I’ll enjoy life more than the years that I will
lose.

~~~
jniedrauer
I quit smoking several years ago and started putting in the work to repair my
cardiovascular system. The overall improvement to my wellbeing and state of
mind cannot be overstated. I gained far more than I lost. My only regret is
not doing it a lot sooner.

~~~
sbayeta
Same here

------
WalterBright
Getting what you want is boring. The fun is in working to achieve it.

For example, writing a check to get your dream car is boring. Designing and
building your dream car out of parts is loads of fun.

------
cheerlessbog
I don't use social media, but I do sometimes wonder whether my iPhone has a
net negative impact on my life. Has anyone tried downsizing to a flip phone
for a few months to compare?

~~~
Qw3r7
I often thought of switching from a Galaxy to a BlackBerry just to have a
physical keyboard back with a smaller screen.

------
PeterStuer
Company A makes a product that truly solves a need, as in, buying or consuming
its cure, you have no further need to consume it ever again. There is true
utility, but there is no further marginal utility to be gained from subsequent
consumption. For example: a company selling cookwear that is so good that its
pots and pans are handed down the generations. Once you hae a set you nor the
one that inherits from you will ever have to buy cookwear again. Long term
these companies fail because the eat their own market.

Company B makes a product that does not solve your need, but provides a mere
temporary relief. If you want to keep your problem 'solved', you have to
perpetually buy the relief. In the above cookwear example, sell pans that are
10 times cheaper than those of company A, but they only last for 2 years until
they bend or crack, so you need to buy a new set of crappy pans every 2 years.
Unlike A, company B does not usurp it's own market. They can in theory keep
selling junk cookware forever. This is partly why we live in a world filled
with crap that breaks all the time, but unfortunately there is even worse.

Company C is a more nefarious type of 'B' company. It's products increase the
problem at the same time they provide the temporary relief, thus increasing
their own demand or making escaping the downward spiral harder and harder. We
recognize and regulate against a few of these types of products, often fast
acting ones (crack cocaine), but the vast majority can keep dodging regulation
for a very long time (tobacco, alcohol, sugar, ...)

Company D is the true champion of the neo-liberal market economy though. It
provides a product with genuine utility, that doesn't necessarily have the
slippery slope built into it, but creates it nevertheless through
externalities. A typical example of this is a car. It provides undeniably
great benefits to person buying the car (personal mobility), while at the same
time impacting the lives of all in a slightly negative way (pollution, use of
public space, noise, ...). Let's say in a small model world where everyone
starts with a 'happiness score' of 0, that the car 'buyer' gets a solid +500
happiness points, while everyone gets a shared -1. Yes, we might feel a little
worse at the start, but that -1 is easy to offset with a solid net +499 I get
the moment I also buy that desirable car. It is not until much further down
the line, when the cumulative unhappiness has reached levels that not even a
+499 buy can rectify, that some enlightened soul can observe we might have
been better of without cars altogether in terms of happiness, but even at the
point where people would realize this, they individually only have the choice
between buying and at least get a +499 added even though the overall happiness
score will still be far under water and sinking, or personally forego the
consumption and still be 499 happiness points worse off. Personal abstention
doesn't solve anything, apart from maybe a slight moral feelgood, as it is the
consumption of all others that creates the systemic misery. This is why 'vote
with your wallet' is a pretty hollow, even cynical phrase, in these types of
situations.

Economists like to portray 'the market' as a fight among type A companies one-
upping better 'solutions'. In reality it is the type B,C, and D companies that
are systemically selected for long term, and that explains why we are
consuming ourselves into perpetual unhappiness.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Mostly never.

