alt Hacker NewsI don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method. The paper referred to does not. It uses a special US dataset for states and a much smaller global dataset for every other country, then treats the results as if they measure the same thing. This setup almost guarantees that US states look unusually good. The authors present this as evidence, but it mostly reflects differences in survey design rather than real differences in wellbeing. In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.
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Came to say the same thing. The author criticizes the happiness report methodology than immediately cites a report full of methodological problems
> I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method.
The simplicity is nice, but for the (probable) fact that suicide attempts/rates and emigration don't correspond... so lets not call it happiness.
I am yet to be convinced that 4000 data points are sufficient to extrapolate how happy 2.8B people are in the world. (India and China) Especially when it deals with a complex topic as happiness without taking any cultural differences into account.
People on HN tend to argue it’s sufficient data to be statistically significant, but I don’t see how.
The substack references Nilsson et al [1] in regards to criticisms of the Cantril Ladder. It's a pretty easy to read paper so I highly suggest just reading it.
I would like to rewrite it, replacing desires with hormones, since they are the drivers for desires, when young one could jump a wall, risking his/her life to see the one we desire, then in their fifties on a nude beach everybody looks and feels mundane. The defining experience of our age seems to be biochemical hunger. We're flooded with hormones that tell us to crave more, even when we already have more than we need. We're starved for balance while stimuli multiply around us. Our dopamine peaks and crashes without reason; our cortisol hums in the background like faulty wiring.
We live with a near-universal imbalance: the reign of thin hormones. These thin hormones promise satisfaction but never deliver. They spike and vanish, leaving behind only the impulse to chase the next hit. Philosophers once spoke of desires that change the self; today, our neurochemistry is being short-circuited before the self even enters the conversation.
A thick hormone is slower, steadier. It reshapes you in the process of living it—like the oxytocin that comes from trust, or the endorphins that build with persistence. But thin hormones—those dopamine flickers from notifications, likes, and swipes—do nothing but reproduce themselves. They deliver sensation without transformation, stimulation without growth.
Modern systems have perfected the art of hijacking our endocrine circuitry. Social media fires the neurons of connection without the chemistry of friendship. Porn delivers the hormonal spike of intimacy without the vulnerability that generates oxytocin. Productivity apps grant the dopamine signature of accomplishment with nothing actually achieved. We’ve built an economy not of meaning, but of molecules. And none of it seems to be making us more alive.
"Pick a random number between 1 and 10" is also a clear and consistent method, and also not particularly meaningful.
The point I took from the article is that we should stop paying attention to this meaningless metric. I didn't read it as a request to replace it with another metric.
> In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.
It's a simple question, sure, but it's not clear that it's a very meaningful one, even if other approaches aren't necessarily any better. When I think of the word happiness, I don't exactly associate it with suicide or rarely smiling.
In case others are wondering what the one simple question is (called the Cantril Ladder):
“Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”
Personally feels a little more convoluted than just asking "How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?"