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11-11-2012 I don't watch the news, if I can help it. It's so biased that there's not really any point. |
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12-11-2012 While your baseline happiness level might indeed skyrocket after winning the lottery and then return to normal,п»ї you will be in FAR better position than you were before because you will have far less worries and thus your happiness episodes will be far more frequent. I think that's where Gilbert was wrong. |
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12-11-2012 Nope... your happiness level will come back to its baseline, because you'll get used to your new lifestyle. |
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12-11-2012 I keep thinking after watching this video.. yes of course life is not great. We are evolved animals on a mysterious, vicious planet suspended in an unknown location in space.Our whole evolutionary process.. the fight for each generation towards the next is progress. Progress towards less pain, easier life, easier survival, more opportunity for happiness.. So, unfortunately, what we discover as we go along is that new problems evolve where the previous ones ended. There cannot be a painless, problem-less existence, no matter how far our technologies go. Life itself is pain.. life itself is happiness. It depends on many unfairly distributed things, like economic status, background, location, etc. One thing that is not fair, but is the way it is, is that happiness takes work, but pain just happens by itself. Pain is the default setting. It's like life itself takes energy and focus. Through that, you can achieve happiness. Pain though, is always waiting. When lifeforce dies, pain and death creep in. Feel free to delete if you feel this is not on topic, Irina. |
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13-11-2012 John - you're right. That's one of the tragic aspects of existenceFrancois - I wish I could win the lottery so that I could prove you wrong |
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13-11-2012 It wouldn't help. You would still eventually come back to your happiness baseline. |
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13-11-2012 Well, come on, let's be real. It would help. It would pay for tons of shit and the financial burden would ease off.So you would be really initially happy feeling that change. You'd come back to your baseline after awhile, but a new kind of baseline where many old problems were taken care of to leave new problems in their place.. New problems like.. before you had trouble paying your bills, but felt comraderie in your work and belonging. After lottery: no work and fewer friends. People disliking you maybe because you worked less.. 'too good for them now'.. and probably friends always asking you for loans. More social isolation, loss of meaning in life, etc.. because what we do creates our meaning. I've always thought the lottery was a horrible game the rich devised for the poor. Wealth only works if everyone in your circle is wealthy. Otherwise it just ostracizes you in new ways. |
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15-11-2012 Francois: it depends on what the baseline happiness level is. If I didn't have to work another day in my life, my baseline level of happiness would skyrocket to the stratosphere. |
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15-11-2012 Stop trying to argue against science, it's not very convincing. |
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15-11-2012 Science is at its most accurate when making objective measurements of reality (i.e. particle physics, astronomical observations, chemistry, biology, etc) but psychology is not really science to the same extent. That's why I always thought that all psychologists and psychiatrists are full of shit (except you Irina!) and the pills they prescribe do far more (scientifically speaking) than any of the psychobabble they sell you.The Gilbert theory of baseline happiness seems probable for a lot of reasons but its not valid for all cases since its not really as scientific as you seem to think it is due to the nature of conscious experience. I can guarantee you that if I didn't have to work for a living, I would be far happier even if my baseline level of happiness goes back to what it is now - I would have far more pleasure and far less pain since the future shit that could happen would not have happened since I am so much better financially (once I win the lottery that is) |
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15-11-2012 Yes, obviously all the carefully crafted and measured psychological experiments are bullshit. Fuck the Milgram Experiment! Fuck the Asch Conformity Experiment! And all those experiments on child development and schooling! We've never learned anything from that shit! Don't they know about the nature of conscious experience?But you and I know better, ol chum... we know the real Truth. |
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16-11-2012 I only trust the experiments conducted on anything other than humans really. Its such a manipulative, irrational and ignorant species that unless something lights up on some sort of MRI scan, I will not buy it as proof of anything. All experiments can be lied and cheated through so I don't buy it.If I was part of a sample group, I would refute most of their theories and they would slot me under "experiment abnormality" |
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