From: Lucas Womack (lucas.womack@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 22 2008 - 20:25:50 MDT
> >Second, happiness is bounded. There is no evidence that humans are
> happier
> >than animals, or that the rich are happier than the poor, or that modern
> >humans are happier now than centuries ago.
>
> There is evidence for all those assertions.
I have no idea how you would measure the happiness of animal? I can tell if
a dog is happy. I have no idea if that dog is happier than I am....there is
no metric I can come up with that compares tail wagging pace to the how
happy that Scandinavians feel on a scale of 1 to 5; 1 being unhappy, 5 being
super happy.
Funny you should mention the rich v poor thing. Lots of stuff the last
couple of weeks about how the Easterlin Hypothesis is wrong. See here:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/the-economics-of-happiness-part-4-are-rich-people-happier-than-poor-people/
The last graph is truly great if you want to believe that wealth brings
happiness.
Lucas II
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