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Michael van der Riet's avatar

"Happiness is an affective state that motivates us to engage in actions that are likely to lead to outcomes that would, on average, lead to increases in the likelihood of survival and/or reproduction. "

Quelle BS. Fatties on a strict diet and rigorous exercise program are never happy about it. Give me a few minutes and I could think of forty-three more examples.

I go with Hobbes and Locke in thinking that happiness aka utility is

1. Hedonistically, a state of satisfaction, when your immediate needs have been fulfilled

2. The engaging in activities that give pleasure such as reading, playing sport, time spent with people you care for

3. Awareness that you are progressing towards a worthwhile, predetermined goal, such as when the fatty stands on the scale and has lost weight.

Actions that are likely to improve our survival and reproductive chances are the subject of evolutionary biology. Most of the time we're not even aware that we're doing them.

The therapist who says that rich people are unhappy is obviously perpetrating selection bias. Try telling a starving mother with starving children that she is happier than a billionaire and she will reach for her gun.

Anecdotally when I met a male gynaecologist and expressed my envy, he said it had put him right off sex because all he saw all day was diseased vaginas.

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Woolery's avatar

>We can define happiness from that perspective. I’ll re-use here a definition proposed by Glenn Geher:

Happiness is an affective state that motivates us to engage in actions that are likely to lead to outcomes that would, on average, lead to increases in the likelihood of survival and/or reproduction.

Once understood as such, some intriguing features of happiness make sense.<

This view of happiness, which I believe is sound, is an absolutely crushing defeat for the happiness prospects of seniors, who are out of the reproduction game altogether, can’t enjoy any resources they’ve amassed due to habituation, and who have no future prospects due to a rapidly declining mind and body (not to mention near-term death).

For any younger folks who are amazed at nanna’s outward good humor despite her age, rest assured that she’s crying inside and would eagerly chew her own leg off to escape from the miserable bear trap of old age.

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