
Love People, Not Pleasure - ghostwords
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/arthur-c-brooks-love-people-not-pleasure.html
======
roryokane
The article looks at a study that found that that men and women who had had
exactly one sexual partner in the past year were happiest. The article
concludes that therefore, having sex with more partners will make us unhappy.
However, this conclusion is hasty.

Another explanation can be made, based on two correlations that I think are
likely: having multiple sexual partners is negatively correlated with having
at least one stable romantic partner, and having at least one stable romantic
partner is positively correlated with happiness. Given those two correlations,
it is easy to see why having multiple sexual partners might be negatively
correlated with happiness. The people who sleep around a lot are doing it
because they have not found a girlfriend/boyfriend, so they are lonely. Thus,
they are unhappy.

If this explanation for the study's results is true, then sex with more
partners will not make you unhappy, per se. It just means that you should make
sure you have a romantic companion first (hopefully one who is agreeable to
your seeking multiple partners). After you have a partner, it is possible that
indulging your instincts by seeking even more partners would indeed make you
happier.

~~~
Exenith
I also have doubts that the benefit is due to monogamy. Hell, I have doubts
that the benefit is due to a relationship. It could merely be because the
people have a close companion.

How many friends do you sleep in the same room with, wake up to, go to work
with, and have fun with? None, right? The thing is, that situation was the
norm for most of humanity. It's not a surprise that so many people are
neurotic. It's not a surprise that it makes us a bit happier to have that
situation partially fulfilled.

I'd like to see a study comparing the happiness of close-knit, tribal,
polygamous communities with close-knit, tribal, monogamous communities.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Last I heard, most close-knit tribal communities are actually more-or-less
monogamous. The main binding structure is the extended family, not extended
sexual networks.

~~~
barry-cotter
They're serially monogamous, not life long exclusive pair bonds. Not that
those don't exist but they're mostly a minority pursuit.

The below quotation gives a flavour of what it's like for the Irish non
working class, living in or applying for social housing. From what I've read
of the book _Promises I Can Keep_ and Charles Murray's _Coming Apart_ it's
pretty close to the situation in the US non working class, with the no college
working class trending that way.

==

I don’t care if you break up with your significant other, spouse, or what it
was, or who was at fault, but if I get one more file like the soap opera I
have just been handed this week (you may wish to take notes)…

…wherein Household A comprised of B, C and child D and Household Q comprised
of R, S and children T and U have both had applications in for a couple of
years for social housing.

(i) Household A’s application failed because the parties B and C were not in
communication with us as to whether they wanted to proceed. B did not answer
our letter, C did; they’ve since split up and are at different addresses. More
letters on our part to the new addresses. B doesn’t answer but C does, he
still wants to apply for a house because now he’s with a new partner and they
have a new baby. Fine, that’s what we’re here for.

(ii) Household Q’s application has been approved. Except that R and S have
also since split up, but they never bothered to tell us, and I only discovered
this because

(iii) C and S are now cohabiting. And have a new (third) application in for
social housing. All of which means:

(iv) We don’t know where B is; we presume she took child D with her wherever
she is now. Maybe she will or maybe she won’t apply for social housing on her
own behalf. R’s application which has been approved now has to be nullified or
something of the like because the circumstances have changed. R may be
cohabiting with a new partner and with a new baby of their own; we don’t know
and will have to find out.

Meanwhile, C and S and her children T and U and their new baby W are all in a
fourth new address, have a new application in as Household Y, and will have to
be processed as soon as we disentangle Household A’s application, deal with
terminating Household Q’s application, and enter Household Y’s application
with the two persons from A and Q that the computer system – which was not
designed to deal with the game of “musical chairs” when it comes to swapping
your partners – won’t let us assign C and S to a new application because
they’re already on the system with their prior applications.

And that means delay, which means C and S (and possibly R and/or B) will be on
the phone yelling at us about being on the housing list with years and why the
delay when they’re qualified they’re going to the local paper, their local
councillor, their local representative about this!

You can see why I’m all NO CANOODLING UNTIL YOU SORT YOURSELVES OUT AND GIVE
US ALL AND I DO MEAN ALL THE PERTINENT DETAILS IN A TIMELY MANNER, I trust?

~~~
jtheory
Eh, read between the lines here. That's written specifically to seem confusing
& crazy. It's not. Two families split up because one partner from each formed
a single new couple.

That's all that happened. It's only "complicated" in the writer's mind because
the two families had put in applications in the same apparently-awful social
housing computer system.

The complaint about needing this info "in a timely manner" is a bit ironic...
the original two applications have apparently been pending for "a couple of
years" before the story even begins.

------
mattgreenrocks
I'm particularly interested in how people receive this piece here, since it
_directly_ contradicts many of the goals put forth by YC and SV:

* work really hard so you can cash out (greed)

* build influence however you can (fame)

* ...ultimately, become _somebody_ so you can fill that hole

The poor motives (which I've parenthesized) probably account for much of the
fact that the New Boss is no different than the Old Boss that came before.
Think about the love of cultural homogeny, or working your ass off (being
exploited), or worship of youth, or proving yourself to capital (whether by
OSS, influence, or profitable side projects).

~~~
lsc
>* work really hard so you can cash out (greed)

Were you born so rich that you can spend all day hanging out with your
friends, without worrying about money? Most of us were not.

Many people here (myself included) claim that they are working really hard so
that they can get enough money to be able to do whatever they want for the
rest of their lives.

For me, at least, the idea of working really hard for a short period of time
is way more appealing than some 9-5 job where I show up every day for the rest
of my life, regardless of how hard (or not) that I am expected to work.

You aren't getting around the fact that you need money; until you solve the
problem of food, housing and medical care for the rest of your life, earning
money is going to be a problem that will take time away from finding whatever
it is that makes you happy.

Even if working makes you happy, having enough money that you don't _need_ to
work gives you a huge amount of leverage and freedom that will allow you to
turn down work that isn't conducive to your happiness.

pg, actually, has talked a whole lot about this, and about how maybe we should
try to change things so that founders can take out more money early on because
of this.

ref:

[http://paulgraham.com/vcsqueeze.html](http://paulgraham.com/vcsqueeze.html)

"My second suggestion will seem shocking to VCs: let founders cash out
partially in the Series A round. At the moment, when VCs invest in a startup,
all the stock they get is newly issued and all the money goes to the company.
They could buy some stock directly from the founders as well.

...

In fact, letting the founders sell a little stock early would generally be
better for the company, because it would cause the founders' attitudes toward
risk to be aligned with the VCs'. As things currently work, their attitudes
toward risk tend to be diametrically opposed: the founders, who have nothing,
would prefer a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, while
the VCs can afford to be "rational" and prefer the latter."

~~~
gdulli
> Were you born so rich that you can spend all day hanging out with your
> friends, without worrying about money? Most of us were not.

That's a false dichotomy. It's easy to have a job in technology that more than
pays the bills but doesn't require the same sacrifices as working towards an
exit or fame. You can be comfortable without being materialistic.

A goal to retire early doesn't address the "people" side of the "people vs.
pleasure" idea. All the luck to you if you never want to work again, but the
parent comment's points still stand.

> Even if working makes you happy, having enough money that you don't need to
> work gives you a huge amount of leverage and freedom that will allow you to
> turn down work that isn't conducive to your happiness.

Here it just seems like you're trying to scare people who have different
values than you into having your values.

~~~
lsc
>A goal to retire early doesn't address the "people" side of the "people vs.
pleasure" idea. All the luck to you if you never want to work again, but the
parent comment's points still stand.

My point is that if you are spending 40 hours a week working and 5 or 10 hours
a week commuting, you don't have nearly as much time for your friends as you
would have with a little more financial independence.

~~~
potatolicious
Unless all of your friends are also independently wealthy, you never having to
work again isn't going to change the equation all that much. _They_ will still
be at work most of the day.

It should also be noted that the odds of startup success (to an extent where
you literally never have to work again) is quite unlikely. You can spend time
with your friends and family _now_ \- perhaps not _all_ of your time, and not
completely at your leisure and control, but if the alternative is sacrificing
the people you care about for a _tiny_ chance at spending _all_ your time with
them... I don't think that's a rational tradeoff.

~~~
lsc
>It should also be noted that the odds of startup success (to an extent where
you literally never have to work again) is quite unlikely.

Eh, I mostly agree, if you mean the typical "swing for the fences" kind of
startup. But, I think there is awareness of this, for example, the PG essay I
linked to a couple messages back mentioned that a 100% chance of a million
bucks, to someone without money, is worth a heck of a lot more than a 20%
chance at ten million bucks. (obviously, the latter is worth rather more to
people who have enough money to amortize out the chances.)

The thing is, you don't need to do a swing for the fences kind of startup if
you don't want to. Before this latest investment craze, HN was very big on
bootstrapping. I've been running my own bootstrapped company for the last
decade or so, and while I am right now attempting to recover from some very
bad choices, and thus am doing poorly, for a while, it was pretty nice. I had
a very flexible life. I have been able to hire nearly all of my siblings, at
one point in time or another; as far as spending time with friends and family
goes, my company has been quite successful. I was able to work as much as I
wanted, or scale back to very little.

Being your own business, even if that business is, say, contracting, is one
way to get a lot more flexibility out of your life. When my income was mostly
selling my own labor, I'd sometimes work for other people one year on/one year
off. (Timed so I worked 6 months out of each tax year)

Now, I mostly worked on my own stuff on the years off, but the strategy would
work just as well if I wanted to work a tax-minimizing half-time schedule. As
far as I can tell, it's way easier to get a good-paying part-time job as a
contractor than as a full-time W2.

------
redmaverick
_Some had “intrinsic” goals, such as deep, enduring relationships. Others had
“extrinsic” goals, such as achieving reputation or fame._

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”
-- Albert Einstein

The author considers "deep enduring relationships" as an intrinsic goal.
People are extrinsic too. They can be fickle, move away, die etc. I think
intrinsic goals would mean a heavy focus on self improvement. Like developing
temperance, patience, forgiveness. Improving self awareness, delaying
gratification, having empathy for others, having a desire to contribute and
have an impact on society etc.

~~~
pestaa
I'm not entirely sure Einstein meant it the way it reads on the surface. He
always came across as a people-focused thinker to me. Consider his other
popular wisdom:

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."

Is there something I'm missing?

~~~
capex
The goal can be focused on helping peoples' lives, but probably not about a
particular person.

------
firstOrder
The author is the president of the American Enterprise Insititute. AEI's board
are the CEO's of ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical etc. Including the CEO of Enron
until he was ousted. They are bankrolled by Ford, GE, Chrysler, AT&T etc.

What is his message to us?

"when money becomes an end in itself, it can bring misery"..."People who rate
materialistic goals like wealth as top personal priorities are significantly
likelier to be more anxious, more depressed"..."the moral snares of
materialism"..."it requires a deep skepticism of our own basic desires"

The majority shareholders of the companies bankrolling his institute own the
lion's share of this country's stocks, bonds and other assets, and are
continually at war with the workers in the company's they own so that a larger
lion's share of money coming in goes to profits and not wages.

So of course in this zero-sum game, the parasitical side is going to tell the
workers, the wealth creating side, that they should not be too concerned with
money, that wealth isn't everything, that uneasy lay the head that wears the
crown, and all this other nonsense. They used to have priests and reverends
dress up these ideas with superstitious mumbo-jumbo, but nowadays more people
are smart enough to see through that BS ( although he does talk about "Saint"
Paul, the Dalai Lama, Buddha, the Love of God ).

This crook is so full of hubris, he wants to lecture me on how to live a
better life - that being that I should ask for a smaller piece of the pie that
I work to create, and perhaps instead dwell on "the strength to love others -
[...] God", the thoughts of "Saint" Paul and other nonsense.

Why doesn't he tell his contributors to stop employing psychologists and
Madison Avenue to try to figure out how best to create conspicuous consumption
so that people will buy the commodities they're pumping out. The advertising
business is one of the biggest forces out there trying to tell people life is
more enjoyable if certain commodities are purchased, and he is at the center
of that world. He likes quoting the bible? Try Matthew 7:

"Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not
the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me
pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt
thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

~~~
dredmorbius
Good point. Sourcewatch is a good source of context on such organizations:
[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Ins...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute)

------
parasight
The article reminded me of the book "To Have or to Be?" by the German social
psychologist Erich Fromm. Fromm believed that the problem of the modern
society is that we are too much concerned with having instead of being. It is
a good read.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Have_or_to_Be%3F](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Have_or_to_Be%3F)

------
waynecochran
Sounds like a review of the book of Ecclesiastes -- Solomon tried power, fame,
pleasure, money, all of it ...vanity ...meaningless. Sun will be red giant in
6 billion years. All of this will be gone...

~~~
humanrebar
I had a similar thought. Though the author certainly doesn't reach Solomon's
conclusion.

------
Afforess
I think this is why I enjoy working on FOSS projects a lot. At the end of the
day, it is really great to interact with users and know you improved someone
else's day, even a little bit.

------
cyorir
This article reads like a crude and incomplete rehashing of Buddhism's four
noble truths, minus the fourth. Humans experience suffering, this suffering
comes from desire, to eliminate suffering one must eliminate desire. The
difference is that the article distinguishes between 'extrinsic' and
'intrinsic' desires whereas in Buddhist discourse it is generally held that
suffering comes from all forms of desire, intrinsic or not.

~~~
mbrock
That's itself a rather incomplete way to explain the Four Noble Truths.
Generally, utilizing desire is the only way to make any progress along the
Buddhist path. Thanissaro Bhikkhu has written lots about this; here's a quote:

"Most of us, when looking at the four noble truths, don't realize that they're
all about desire. We're taught that the Buddha gave only one role to desire —
as the cause of suffering. Because he says to abandon the cause of suffering,
it sounds like he's denying any positive role to desire and its constructive
companions: creativity, imagination, and hope. This perception, though, misses
two important points. The first is that all four truths speak to the basic
dynamic of desire on its own terms: perception of lack and limitation, the
imagination of a solution, and a strategy for attaining it. The first truth
teaches the basic lack and limitation in our lives — the clinging that
constitutes suffering — while the second truth points to the types of desires
that lead to clinging: desires for sensuality, becoming, and annihilation. The
third truth expands our imagination to encompass the possibility that clinging
can be totally overcome. The fourth truth, the path to the end of suffering,
shows how to strategize so as to overcome clinging by abandoning its cause."

------
MisterBastahrd
So does this mean he's going to push for all companies that fund AEI to give
their employees at least 6 weeks of paid vacation a year? Because one of the
things that makes people REALLY happy is the free time to pursue their
interests outside of the office.

------
auggierose
So is the software you build "a thing"? I guess this depends on what you are
working on is making a vision a reality, or a CRUD application that you sell
for XXXXXX dollars to a customer.

I find the article is too shallow. Loving people can make you really unhappy,
or happy, that depends a lot on you and on the people. Sex with just 1 person
can be exactly what you want, but if you are really interested in sex then 1
person might just not be enough.

So no, we don't know how to be happy. Citing statistics and applying them
blindly to yourself is a sure recipe for unhappiness. Better to explore
yourself and find out what makes you happy. You can then use statistics to
execute.

------
asimjalis
The irony of this piece is that the author presents happiness as an object to
be acquired.

------
asimjalis
My experience has been that happiness comes from not pursuing happiness.

~~~
logicchains
"The act of pursuing happiness necessarily implies the current absence of
happiness. Make the pursuit of happiness into a habit, and you habitualise the
absence of happiness."

------
onedev
I think this was a good piece if you take it as with all things, not as
absolute fact or 100% correct.

I think the general idea that the article was trying to communicate is a good
and thoughtful idea.

------
drivingmenuts
As a misanthrope, I'm probably screwed.

The ideal is to make enough money to not have to deal with people, other than
a very select few.

~~~
fred_durst
I mean this in the most genuine way possible, but you can never be around
people for dirt cheap. If you could save up 50k you could by a house in the
middle of nowhere for 20k, invest the rest to bring in a couple hundred
dollars a month and work online to cover the rest of your expenses. Or become
a cross country truck driver part of the year. Etc etc. There are tons of very
easy ways to never be around anyone.

You are probably just addicted to the internet and it has caused you to not be
able learn the right social skills to enjoy the people around you so you just
attach to some idea that you are some "misanthrope". It's like alcoholics that
believe they just naturally depressed people when its really just the alcohol.

Like I said, I mean this in the best way possible, but you probably have an
internet addiction that is stunting your social growth. You might want to try
something like take 1 month and never go online. Get a flip phone and cancel
your internet for a month just to find out. And if what I just said about
going without a smartphone and internet at home for a month sounds impossible,
then that's probably the proof you have an addiction.

~~~
nitrogen
Your algorithm for detecting addiction seems it would have a very high false
positive rate. Consider this restatement:

 _Like I said, I mean this in the best way possible, but you probably have an
air addiction that is stunting your social growth. You might want to try
something like take 1 month and never breathe. Stop breathing for a month just
to find out. And if what I just said about going without air at home for a
month sounds impossible, then that 's probably the proof you have an
addiction._

~~~
fred_durst
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but you are saying a person would die without
the internet?

~~~
nitrogen
I'm saying there are reasons other than addiction why one might not be able to
disconnect for a month (e.g. they are a remote worker).

------
alex_duf
It's refreshing to read something like that on HN. Usually it's more "Hey
look, I made tons of money by doing <insert technology here>"

------
kevinwang
I enjoyed reading this article, although I feel several experiments cited
don't necessarily lead to the conclusions drawn from them.

------
flatfilefan
Tried loving people. It was awful. [grumpy cat picture on the background]
Seriously not everyone is extroverted and btw. tldr.

