Post by Michal Å tÄpánekScott,
I am glad you wrote, good ideas. But for me, some meaningful interaction
after a longer time. The rest is in text...
This is an area I'm very interested in too because these measurements
can help us with the *empirical* process of choosing features of
social and political systems. It always raises a red flag for me when
some amateur social engineer (aka SJW) says we need to, for example,
increase gender equality because this claim is usually merely a result
of their own biases and personality type, This is as an extremely poor
guide: The exact same kind of bias leads a different group of people
to facilitate the selection of authoritarian leaders who will seek to
*increase* inequality. But when you can show that increasing gender
equality (or reducing power distance, or changing a variety of other
social/cultural features) leads to increased subjective well-being
(SWB) of *all* people (not just women) in a culture it means it's good
social engineering practice to add that to the to-do list.
I think we mostly differ in emphasis: I'm not that interested in
having increasing SWB as a goal in itself, but only in using it to
help make decisions about what social/cultural norms to promote and
which to suppress. For example, this (rather formidable) paper claims
that increasing gender equality and decreasing power distance leads to
higher SWB:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4541708/
Post by Michal Å tÄpánekPost by Scott RaneyMaybe it's a translation issue I'm not sure "happiness" is what you
want to use here.
With happiness I refer to "subjective well-being" to this collection
https://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/
Right: We should probably stick to the current technical term for this (SWB).
Post by Michal Å tÄpánekAs a method of measurement I like smartphone Experince Sampling Method.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_sampling_method
This is certainly better than a single question on a paper and pencil
survey, but still doesn't deal with the reporting bias issue.
Post by Michal Å tÄpánekPost by Scott RaneyThere's lots of research in this area that shows
that "happiness" is relatively rare, very hard to measure (all kinds
of reporting biases),
I some sense you are right, but I hope this article will calm your worries
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300332706_What_We_Have_Learnt_About_Happiness
Sorry, not really. This is a hot research topic, but the most
convincing evidence for me is anecdotal: My wife is from Taiwan and
even after 30 years together I'm still regularly surprised by how
different our perspectives are on what's important in life. A lot of
it is just the usual male/female differences, but cultural factors are
an even bigger issue. If you ask an Asian if they're "happy", they're
as likely as not going to respond "What difference does that make?"
and this attitude will of course be reflected in their responses on
questionnaires. Veenhoven, as is the case with most researchers
(especially in psychology), along with most of his subjects are WEIRD
(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
http://www.matchism.org/refs/Henrich_2010_WeirdestPeople.pdf) and they
really don't deal with east Asians or people in small-scale societies
much or very well. The issue is maybe a little better if you use SWB
instead of "happiness", but bias remains. Fortunately the research is
useful for making social engineering decisions even if you can't use
it to directly compare countries/governments/customs/etc.
(snip)
Post by Michal Å tÄpánekAs far as I know there is only a few possible reporting biases.
Misunderstanding question. Forced answer (somebody answering on one's
bahalf). Inability to admit unhappiness, ego issue. But that is not ruining
it, these are acceptable biases.
I think it's more complicated than that: It's not just a matter of
vocabulary, it's just that people in some countries (and I'll avoid
the issue of whether it's genetic or cultural) just don't *think*
about the question "Am I happy?" as much as we WEIRD people do. This
leads to all kinds of systematic biases most importantly that they
tend make lifestyle choices that may exchange "happiness" for money or
family relationships or increasing their chances having a better next
life or whatever. Once they've made a choice like that any claims that
there are systematic cross-cultural differences in happiness (or even
SWB) become completely bogus. But, again, this is only a problem if
you try to set "increasing SWB" as a goal: It's not a problem if you
just use SWB assessments as a tool to help choose among alternative
social engineering tweaks.
Post by Michal Å tÄpánekPost by Scott RaneyI'm inclined to consider this issue in the "how many angels can dance
on the head of a pin" category: We don't need to measure any of these
things, we just need to empower individuals to make public policy
decisions.
No, to do it properly, we do need to measure it :D Not just believe we are
doing it correct :)
But it's not just the measurement that's flawed, it's the underlying
philosophical claim that "happiness is what needs to be optimized". By
doing that you've taken it upon yourself to decide for The People what
it is that needs to be optimized, whereas (of course) I say what needs
to be optimized is *also* something that The People need to decide on
(in aggregate, since different people will choose to optimize
different things). And what gets optimized will be an emergent
property of the decisions they make on individual proposals, not
something they have to philosophize about and decide on first.
Regards,
Scott
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