Something that distorts my assessment of the images is the female's dowdy clothing, unflattering on the female figure except in the pride image. She looks like a shapeless flour sack in the other three pics.
On the male, the shirt seems 'alright', neutral.
I don't know... you don't have to take it in all at once. You can read just one section at a time, after all. Each section has a link to it in the summary. What is the added advantage in splitting it up?
Good catch! Here is their definition (will update the main post later). Bolding mine:
...Vallerand and his colleagues [...] have recently proposed a Dualistic Model of Passion in which passion is defined as a strong inclina-tion or desire toward a self-defining activity that one likes (or even loves), finds important (high valuation), and in which one invests time and energy.
The Dualistic Model of Passion further proposes that there exist two types of passion. The first type of passion is harmonious passion. A harmonious passion produces a strong desire to
Does this mean that outline-summaries in posts like this are a bad idea, given that people can be very impatient?
(BTW, before tl;dr-ing, try breathing deeply first. It may make you feel less impatient :p )
No no, outline summaries are a great idea! Just keep in mind that may be all someone reads ;-)
Explain?
Good question. Unfortunately I tried to focus entirely on 'how to become happier' in researching for this post, although a possible answer to your query is that happiness promotes prosocial behavior and that happiness can be infectious up to three degrees of separation, thereby making everyone more likely to engage in prosocial behavior.
Fixed.
‘positional goods’ which, by definition, cannot be augmented, because they rely solely on not being available to others.
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... the production of positional goods in the form of luxuries, such as exceedingly expensive watches or yachts, is a waste of productive resources, as overall happiness is thereby decreased rather than increased.
^ This is specific to wealth and cannot (necessarily) be said of other forms of status, such as fitness.
You seem to be saying that the rules of the game of wealth-as-status are the same as those for fitness-as-status, to take one of your examples. But this is not at all clear to me. Wealth can be stolen and given away. Wealth can be amassed. Fitness is accessible to most people in a way that wealth is not.
That seems like an unbiased reading of that study.
I'd say that it is an overgeneralization of the findings.
I believe it's more mundane than that. From what I've read, eudaimonic well-being (aka life satisfaction) is measured by self-report tests (eg. "How satisfied are you with your life?")
Still, I argue that you should read the bulk of the post. Reading just the summary may be like just reading the synopsis of a movie (if I may be so hubristic! :) instead of watching it. You 'get' the idea but you don't appreciate it as much, and it doesn't stick with you as much as if you watched it. Less mental associations.
And to be more specific, you will miss, among other things, the supporting argument (aside from the obvious) for why you should make a point of avoiding bad experiences. Perhaps I should have included it in the summary.
The term "conspicuous consumption" is commonly applied to displays of (financial) wealth; the recommendation to avoid conspicuous consumption does not imply that you should avoid all forms of conspicuous superiority. I'm not sure that fitness-as-status is so closely analogous to wealth-as-status.
As for your second paragraph — I'm not certain, but I think it's rational to treat happiness as a maximand. Is your objection not addressed by the sections "Optimal Happification" and "Happiness Interventions Work!" ?
Re Equivocation: Good point. The important distinction seems to be between hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being.
Found on the web:
...Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci
Fixed and fixed! How do you have such sharp eyes.
I thought the meat of the post added a lot to the (already completely awesome!) summary.
Yes, and I don't learn well from outline-summaries only. I imagine that I would not gain much if I had read only the summary up top. The just-acquired lessons would quickly dissipate without the examples and explanations to reinforce them.
Fixed!
1 karma point to go :)
eta: I have 19 karma at the moment.
Oh, wow. Welcome to lesswrong in that case! Best introductory post I recall seeing!
The ability to anticipate experiences is one of our maximands because we have goals that are optimally achieved with this ability. To believe that beliefs should allow us to anticipate experiences is grounded in the desire to achieve our goals.
..."The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty,
Tom: "Diana, have you ever confronted a moral dilemma?"
Diana: "I have spent my life confronting real dilemmas. I have always found moral dilemmas to be the indulgence of the well-fed middle class."
— Waiting for God (TV Series)
Any collocation of persons, no matter how numerous, how scant, how even their homogeneity, how firmly they profess common doctrine, will presently reveal themselves to consist of smaller groups espousing variant versions of the common creed; and these sub-groups will manifest sub-sub-groups, and so to the final limit of the single individual, and even in this single person conflicting tendencies will express themselves.
— Jack Vance, The Languages of Pao
^ But, that can be said of too many things. I don't find it meaningful.
e.g. 'It's plausible that Harry Potter has not been written in the best possible way.'
Of course it's plausible, but the consideration of its plausibility does not contribute to making better-informed decisions. It contributes no useful information!