
Happiness is more like poetry than algorithms - cryptozeus
https://nav.al/math
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tmerr
This post makes a good point about taking another person's idea of happiness
too literally. The same could be said for other words describing internal
experiences, like "consciousness". Where I lose the author is where he implies
that thinking about it poetically will help get at the truth. It may be that
when reading about a happy person's thought process you will absorb bits and
pieces to make you happy as well. But it's not obvious at first glance. Is
there evidence that reading self-help increases happiness in the long term
(for some measure of happiness)? And how does that compare to spending your
time reading studies about happiness?

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pyuser583
Lol. Poetry can be very analytical.

Good poems are meant to be memorized. Good poets often have a very precise
methodology.

Reviewers often use the phrase “technical accuracy.”

To quote many poets, “Hear this, and pass on.”

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libertine
The odd thing is that in school they teach us to dissect poems, going
specifically through some authors.

Yet pretty much no poetry resonates with us as students.

It's true that we're young, and we don't have enough life experience to find
meaning in those words... but shouldn't the reality be that we should see the
world through others eyes? Aren't we empathetic enough at that age, or is that
analytical approach that ends up being pointless?

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jfengel
Literature teachers try, somewhat haphazardly, to expose students to material
that they aren't really ready for. There's no one correct route that will
connect with all students. Some will get it immediately; others will connect
years later; others will never find it resonates with them at all.

I think the most common approaches aren't very effective. They're taught to
treat a poem as a puzzle to be decrypted, as if the poet could have spoken
more plainly but chose not to. You're taught to look for "symbolism", because
a one-to-one matching of symbols to the real world is easy to talk about. But
it didn't help me connect with anything, and I suspect for many others.

A better approach, at least for me, is to take a piece that already connects
and then examine why it works. You already know, for example, that popular
song lyrics are easy to memorize. Why? What is the structure they're using,
and how does that pattern build up more than the same concept expressed in
different words? Why did you like Film X and hate Film Y, even when they're
superficially similar?

There's no right answer, and that's hard to teach. Especially to students like
me, who think of school as "Science and a bunch of classes for students not
smart enough to take science." (I suspect that rings bells for many.) I
eventually learned that I enjoyed things that were created by those "not smart
enough for science", and became interested in how those things worked -- even
though there's still no right answer.

I just now have a way to talk about it, lessons that my English teachers tried
and failed to get to me. I believe they could have done it better, though what
would have worked for me would have failed other people differently.

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joe_the_user
Well, I think the big question is "why can't it be both?"

It seems like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has done a lot of research on happiness
and related qualities as a kind of "flow" [1]. And this entire, overall
process seems reasonably close to the qualities of fractals, which are highly
mathematical objects that also have a multitude of rich qualities similar to
complex systems in the world[2].

I wouldn't assert that there's a full characterization of happiness as
fractals or other math object available now. But it seems like something worth
of research, "taking the question seriously" rather than dismissal. It seems
like such dismissals often given stunted characterizations of what either
happiness or math involves.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal)

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emersonrsantos
I always thought of happiness to be in these final passages of Walter Pater’s
book, The Renaissance:

“Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills
or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or
intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us - for that
moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.”

~~~
nsomaru
In a similar vein, with regards action:

“He who does his bounden duty without attachment to the fruit of action, he is
a yogi, he is a sanyasi” — Bhagavad Gita VI/1

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planetzero
Aren't most human emotions more like poetry than algorithms?

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symplee
Almost.

Laziness = minimum spanning tree

Love = merge sort

Sadness = reversing a linked list

But yes, all other emotions are iambic pentameter poetry.

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vga805
This is one of my favorite hn comments ever.

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allovernow
>I’m going to conflate happiness, pleasure, peace, joy, bliss, contentment,
well-being and more. I don’t do it deliberately.

>But at the same time, this is not math. We cannot clearly bound these words.
They mean different things in different contexts to different people. So try
and get into the spirit of what I’m saying, rather than getting hung up on
specific words and details.

Well, acktually... there's a trivial mathematical representation. Represent
happiness as a vector. Then you can customize thresholds for each person.

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astrea
Not to be a Negative Nellie here, but when I read the title I expected a bit
more substance to the article than a couple sentences rehashing the same idea.

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darkerside
Yeah disappointingly trite. Seems obvious on the surface, but also worthy of,
dare I say, deeper analysis.

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thomk
Not a fan of poetry, or, happiness.

Happiness, for lack of a better word, is boring.

Happiness is boring in the same way being angry al the time is boring; people
evolved to notice change. Every single one of our senses only works by
detecting change.

Take smell for example. Your nose detects a _difference_ in the smell of the
air. When I burn things in the oven, I get used to the smell after a while but
when my wife comes home she says: 'Ahh, cooking again earlier?'

Taste is the most obvious one. Fast for a month then eat a corn chip. You will
taste that simple food so deeply you could pinpoint the field the corn was
grown in. Now eat a million corn chips. You quite literally won't even taste
the last one.

Put a fan on in your office, you'll forget its on. Randomly have someone turn
it off and the difference will be a bit painful that change is so obvious.

Gain 100 pounds, you get used to the feeling of it. Lose the 100 pounds,
you'll get used to that feeling too. If you didn't, people who were obese
would strive to be out of pain. There is pain in being heavy, but you get used
to the feeling of your body.

I have heard a version of "Humans adapt" for my whole life. I think it's more
than that. I think it's more like 'Humans ride the wave of change." We are so
symbiotic with change we don't even notice that change is the thing we both
fight and enjoy.

Why do I rewatch episodes of MASH? Because it's both the same and different
each time. I watch all eleven seasons over and over and what happens? I notice
nuance. That's me detecting change. It's hard to exhaust the nuance because
there is just so much of it. I see patterns, like how Hawkeye acts drunk or
how Hot Lips manages her hair.

What is hard is FORCING change. That's the tricky bit. Lose the weight, win
the lotto, date your dream girl. Now that evolution that has kept you safe by
detecting change fights you because you are way outside your comfort zone and
what you are used to.

Subconsciously, many of us, would do the things that will help us get back to
safe harbor: stifle and defend against self imposed change.

I think focusing on happiness is a poorly defined goal. I'd say to enjoy
happiness but strive to have peace.

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anonytrary
> I think focusing on happiness is a poorly defined goal.

If you think happiness is boring or somehow implies not being able to grieve
or feel angry, then you are most likely using the wrong definition of
happiness. I think happiness a poorly defined word, allowing you to collapse
it into a definition that you saw fit enough to justify ranting about change
and evolution.

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thomk
I think you misunderstood what I said so you could accuse me of ranting.

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anonytrary
An accusation isn't necessary.

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bravoetch
Article summary "man, happiness is a vibe".

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blueadept111
Algorithms is more like Happiness than Poetry.

just think about it... wow.

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taneq
I dunno, I think a really elegant algorithm is poetry.

