[HN Gopher] Good genes are nice, but joy is better ___________________________________________________________________ Good genes are nice, but joy is better Author : teleforce Score : 172 points Date : 2022-04-24 06:51 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (news.harvard.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (news.harvard.edu) | thenerdhead wrote: | I've always believed that Democritus(the laughing philosopher) | was onto something with his work "On Cheerfulness" that inspired | many stoics like Seneca to pass on the idea of enlightened | hedonism. | | While loneliness is a factor that is getting worse each year and | the stats seem to also prove it, I do believe that the idea | Democritus provides for "moderation of everything" is the key. | This sense of relatedness and having a strong sense of | community/relationships still needs to not fall to either | extreme. | | Seneca for example outlined a few things on-top of this work in | "On the tranquility of the mind / on peace of mind" for living a | good life: | | 1. Attitude is everything. | | 2. Don't compare yourself to others, only yourself. | | 3. Love and be loved. | | 4. Do not harm others. | | 5. Cherish the present. | | That the right treatment is to follow nature, find the right | balance between sociability and solitude, labour and leisure, | sobriety and intoxication, and to "watch over our vacillating | mind with intense and unremitting care". | | https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democritus/ | | https://medium.com/@s.sekulins/a-guide-to-happiness-senecas-... | chrisweekly wrote: | +1 Insightful | | But your opening sentence would be much more effective with a | bit of rewording; "inspired many stoics like Seneca to pass on | the idea" is hard to parse, and fatally ambiguous. Did Seneca | "pass [the idea] on" (ie, propogate / endorse it), or did he | "[take a] pass on it" (ie, reject it). Later context makes it | clear you meant the former. Anyway thanks for the links, HTH! | tester756 wrote: | >2. Don't compare yourself to others, only yourself. | | Can "stealing"/learning from other people be considered as a | "comparing" to them? | | Because before you apply their approach, then you have to | | a) find that they're doing it | | b) realize that you aren't | | Thus you kinda indirectly compared yourself to them | rowanG077 wrote: | No? I'm not sure what drove you towards that question. | Stealing and comparing are unrelated I'd say. | tester756 wrote: | I reworded it, should be better now | gffrd wrote: | I read the OP's "compare" as the judgement-filled comparison, | where one measures their self-worth based on where others are | at relative to themselves / relies on external yardsticks for | definition of identity. | | The compare you're talking about--seeking excellent people | (internally defined) and wanting to learn from them (without | judgement)--is an extremely important thing. | bena wrote: | I think it's more along the lines of material goods or things | like "success" or what have you. | | It's an adage that's been repeated over and over in many | ways: "Comparison is the thief of joy". | | For some people, it's not enough that they have something | good, they must have something better than someone else. | "What good is my iPhone 12 if you have an iPhone 13? Why | don't I have an iPhone 13?" And so on. | | But. Last year, they didn't even have a phone. So they're | better off, yeah? | smm11 wrote: | There was some study that looked at this isolated community that | did not have the greatest diet, yet they lived very long lives | and disease was nearly non-existent. What they had was community. | jacinda wrote: | I think you may be referring to the Roseto effect. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect | | This community had unusually low rates of heart disease despite | a large range of traditional risk factors. The general | consensus was that this was due to the community-oriented | nature of the town. Later they did follow-ups and found that as | the town became more stereotypically "American" the mortality | rates due to heart disease increased, especially among younger | men. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1695733/ | [deleted] | waterhouse wrote: | Comments: | | 1. To the title: I'm confident there are good genes that cause | joy. I'm _certain_ there are bad genes that cause anti-joy. | | 2. The actual article talks about relationships with people, and | not about happiness per se. (For example, what about a hermit who | constantly derives joy from listening to classical music?) Bad | title. | | 3. Most of what is stated is a correlation, and it seems there | are obvious alternative explanations, such as the opposite- | direction causality: if your health problems get bad enough, that | may interfere with your relationships. For example: "Part of a | study found that people who had happy marriages in their 80s | reported that their moods didn't suffer even on the days when | they had more physical pain. Those who had unhappy marriages felt | both more emotional and physical pain." Maybe those who feel | worse physical pain are more likely to snap at their spouse, | and/or less likely to do the things that make their spouse feel | loved. | | I mean, it's _plausible_ that the thesis is correct, but the | article seems to overstate the certainty of the evidence. | circlefavshape wrote: | > For example, what about a hermit who constantly derives joy | from listening to classical music? | | Something you just cooked up out of your imagination is not a | real counter-example | musicale wrote: | A plausible hypothetical counterexample is sufficient in this | case to demonstrate logical incompleteness. | waterhouse wrote: | Fine, how about someone who has little or no social life but | derives joy from playing video games and other solitary | pursuits, and also gets enough exercise (or at least as much | as the average person who has good relationships)? I suspect | there are some people on this forum who are like that, and | more people who might become that if they thought it was the | right idea. | | Edit: The point is that the title implies that you'd get the | significant health benefits just by experiencing joy, but the | article says that you need good social relationships, so, if | we believed the article, the title would misdirect people. | jimbokun wrote: | Do you have a long term longitudinal study of many | individuals backing up your claims, like this study does | for claims about the importance of relationships to long | term health? | waterhouse wrote: | What claims am I making? The article is the one that's | claiming causation. I've merely said that its evidence is | insufficient, and also that the title misstates the | claims made in the article. The point of mentioning | "those who get solitary joy with no social life" is that | the title says this is good, but the article says it's | not good--and therefore, even if we believed the | conclusions the article tries to draw, the title gives | bad advice. | SapporoChris wrote: | Social needs vary among people. It's easy to see the | benefits of good social relationships. However, I think | people with lower social needs, smaller to non-existent | social relationships aren't suffering. | abirch wrote: | Most of my gamer friends, game with real people. Not sure | if there are statistics on this or not. | | For what it's worth this is a correlation study and not | causal. I'm sure there are some loners out there that are | very happy, but when I've had turbulent times in my life, | it was my friends who helped me. | erdos4d wrote: | You've never met my uncle I see. | fionaellie wrote: | Even more obvious: Good relationships provide for a higher | level of care and support. When health trouble arises, a | devoted partner's presence (to identify issues and encourage | action), care (when self-care isn't possible), and advocacy | (within our challenging healthcare system) can make all the | difference in the world. | giantg2 wrote: | On number 1, there seems to be some evidence that people with | higher IQs are less likely to be happy. | waterhouse wrote: | There is reason to expect that with today's educational | practices; the effect, funnily enough, does manifest partly | through social relationships: | https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf | | > A 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, | social, and emotional development of 60 young Australians | with IQs of 160 and above. Significant differences have been | noted in the young people's educational status and direction, | life satisfaction, social relationships, and self-esteem as a | function of the degree of academic acceleration their schools | permitted them in childhood and adolescence. | | > The considerable majority of young people who have been | radically accelerated [skipped 3+ years of K-12], or who | accelerated by 2 years, report high degrees of life | satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading | universities, have professional careers, and report | facilitative social and love relationships. Young people of | equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have | not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less | academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of | life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant | difficulties with socialization. | | > I believe that all the young people in this study would | have benefited greatly, both academically and socially, from | grade advancement, while the considerable majority would have | benefited from radical acceleration. Sadly, only 17 were | radically accelerated, and indeed, the majority (33 of the | 60) were retained with age peers for the duration of their | schooling. | | > Several of the nonaccelerands have serious and ongoing | problems with social relationships. These young people find | it very difficult to sustain friendships because having been, | to a large extent, socially isolated at school, they have had | much less practice in their formative years in developing and | maintaining social relationships. Six have had counseling. Of | these, two have been treated for severe depression. | AlanYx wrote: | That's a fascinating paper -- thanks for sharing it. | bpodgursky wrote: | Yes, it is blindingly obvious that people are born with | different happiness set-points, and this is primarily genetic, | if you look at families. | | Circumstances and life adjust this up and down... but some | people are just innately happy and other people are innately | unhappy, and adjust to their set-point quickly after a life | change. | circlefavshape wrote: | There's plenty of research about events (e.g. unemployment or | bereavement) affecting people's happiness long-term if you | care to look | dymk wrote: | There's plenty of research counter to that, showing that | regardless of negative or positive events happening in | one's life, people tend back towards the same happiness | they were at after a few years. | circlefavshape wrote: | I wouldn't say it "counters" it, rather it very much | depends on the events and/or circumstances. Winning the | lottery won't make you happy. Losing your job and failing | to get another one will probably make you sad. Traumatic | events can be very hard to get over. | | Funny enough the only example I've found of an "event" | having a long term _positive_ effect is cosmetic surgery | oneoff786 wrote: | So if you see a person unhappy in poverty it's because of | their genetics? | anshorei wrote: | I think he means the inverse: for people able to find joy | despite adverse circumstances. | | More importantly, I would say, it's likely innate to us | that we are unhappy without adverse circumstances. I.e. for | there to be brightness there needs to be darkness. | showerst wrote: | Are we sure that is "blindingly obvious"? I think the whole | point of studies like this to try to tease out hints at what | parts of it are genetic vs circumstance vs choices. | | FWIW I think that the genetic component of 'innately happy' | is quite small, as I've known relatively few dirt poor people | who were happy anyway, and relatively more carefree upper | class folks. Though of course it's possible it's still | genetic and just caused economic sorting higher up the tree, | I suppose. | Epiphany21 wrote: | >Some participants went on to become successful businessmen, | doctors, lawyers, and others ended up as schizophrenics or | alcoholics, but not on inevitable tracks. | | Why was this assumption made? If the goal of the study is to | analyze the potential for biologically determined outcomes in | people's lives, doesn't this sort of undermine that foundational | question? Why wouldn't genetics play a role in determining | personality, and make some people more outgoing and willing to | embrace a community? | | >Researchers who have pored through data, including vast medical | records and hundreds of in-person interviews and questionnaires, | found a strong correlation between men's flourishing lives and | their relationships with family, friends, and community. | | This doesn't tell us why. Why is that the case? | | >Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your | relationships is a form of self-care too. | | Taking care of your relationships IS taking care of your body. | Our mind is a physical organ like the heart or lungs. Our entire | personalities, our thoughts, our dreams and everything that | comprises consciousness is just a series of abstractions built on | top of flesh. | | IMO, the real lesson these researchers should've taken away from | this is that the mind is not separate from the rest of the body. | acheron wrote: | "I'd far rather be happy than right any day." | | "And are you?" | | "No. That's where it all falls down of course." | giantg2 wrote: | "The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy | we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our | health," | | Well I'm screwed. I don't take care of my body either. | citrus1330 wrote: | There's still time to change that. | at_a_remove wrote: | I am reminded of an Achewood comic [1] about a Harvard study | regarding love: "So maybe the next time you Harvard guys decide | to study some Harvard guys ... just remember that for most folks | the Maslow hierarchy tops out at lookin' in the bathroom mirror | without drawin' an X in the steam." | | 1: http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04152016 | mynameishere wrote: | Apropos of nothing except the comment I am responding to, I | just idly clicked the next comic and completely forgot that I | had read it already, until the last immortal line: "I wonder | where it will be when it dies." It's weird that Charles Schulz | had like 800 billion dollars and Chris Onstad is working in a | greasy spoon or something. | revskill wrote: | More concretely, to me, the most important thing in a | relationship is trust. | | Trust is like Rome, we can't simply build it in 1 day, or simply | buy it. | | Trust is nessessary condition for any long term relationship. | ilamont wrote: | I wish they would include these types of studies in Harvard's | curriculum and community life, where there is an outsized | emphasis on pedigree, test scores, and unlocking career | achievements. | | There used to a dating website that advertised heavily on Boston- | area public radio stations called "GoodGenes" that specifically | restricted participation to Ivy League graduates. Facebook | followed a similar pattern (at first) limiting participation to | elite schools. | paulpauper wrote: | Remember when Harvard was considered to be intellectually | peerless. Yeah, the only thing going for it is its endowment. | Like others growing up, I assumed that Harvard was only for the | best and the brightest in the world. If you applied for Harvard | and didn't get in, this is what you're missing. Even the most | prestigious of institutions are not immune to the replication | crisis and hand-waving research overall. | | Just another attempt to downplay the roles of money, social | status as it pertains to happiness. I am sure someone who is | smart, wealthy and has high social status, like Bezos or Musk, is | happier than the average person of their age group who has | neither. Being happy at 80 or 90 does not matter. I want to be | happy now. For for most people, that means having money and | professional/career status and success. Yeah, the midlife crisis | is a real thing, but for unsuccessful people who make no money, | life is a daily crisis if you're poor. | cinntaile wrote: | Why are you drawing all kinds of conclusions regarding Harvard | the institution based on you disliking this study? | paulpauper wrote: | cause it's their study? | cinntaile wrote: | You suppose a lot of things in your reasoning that you | don't back up with any data or references and then you use | this to discredit the institution based on a popular | science article. It doesn't really make much sense. | dash2 wrote: | I get so tired of seeing the same research pretending that | causation is correlation. At some point I just don't want to trot | out the same old comment. Maybe we should just accept that whole | swathes of social science have given up on taking causality | seriously. | abirch wrote: | I was hoping the answer was arguing with strangers on the | internet. That's what I seem to do and was hoping that was the | answer. | DoreenMichele wrote: | _Those ties protect people from life's discontents, help to delay | mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long | and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes._ | | If you have good relationships, you have people taking care of | you in important ways probably every single day, whether you | interact with them that day or not. Over time, this adds up. | | If you don't have that, the cost may be invisible but will | inevitably add up over time. | moonshinefe wrote: | Makes sense. The people I've seen with problem relationships have | more emotional issues and that's often when things like drug use | and bad decisions go hand in hand. | | The good news is I have a wonderful wife who I get along with | really well. However, the further into my 30s I go the fewer | friends I seem to have. Moving to a new country and the pandemic | definitely didn't help. Where do people approaching middle age | meet friends these days? Everyone always seems to in their own | bubble and wants to fight about politics or other wedge issues | instead of just chilling for lack of a better word. | Barrin92 wrote: | >wants to fight about politics or other wedge issues | | It's always so funny that this is brought up on HN as a reason | for lack of socialization or problem so often. One of the | biggest and most durable parts of my social life is being a | member of a political party, which I have been in since I was | 16 years old. | | Being involved in civic/political life means you have | connections with people from all walks of life across all | generations and backgrounds. just wanting to chill is the | actual problem because I don't think these suburban soccermom | type social circles sustain _meaningful_ relationships. | Participating in public life is the most straightforward way to | build social relationships that matter. | | There was another great post here a few weeks ago from someone | explaining why he continues to serve in the British Yeomanry. | https://chrisseaton.com/army/ | escapedmoose wrote: | Right. It seems a bit odd that our goal in friendships is | often to find someone who will "just sit and chill." If you | want any diversity in your friendships, they'll likely need | to be made "shoulder to shoulder," ie when working toward a | common cause. | throwawayboise wrote: | Agreed, and it also seems to me that most adults, at least | the ones leading something like meaningful lives, don't | have a lot of time to "just sit and chill." When my kids | were young I rarely did, there was always something going | on. Now that they are older and out of the house, I have | more time for myself but I'm using that time, not just | sitting around (mostly not, anyway). | holoduke wrote: | Similar story for me. It changed once i moved out of the city | with kids to a residential area. Since then 3 years have passed | and the quality of my social life increased dramatically. Of | course this didn't just came around. I did put a lot of effort | in getting new friends. But it's certainly easier in an | environment where people live similar lifes. | throwawayboise wrote: | > Where do people approaching middle age meet friends these | days? | | For me it was parents of my kids' friends, often via sports or | other group activities that the kids were all involved in. | | Those friendships fade quickly once the kids grow up, by the | way, as there is no longer the common connection. I've made | some attempts to maintain these, but they generally are not | reciprocated and at some point you just stop with the one-sided | effort. | | I have not discovered the secret to long-lasting friendships, | if there is one. They all seem to rely on common proximity | (school, work, gym, etc.) and they don't really hold up if and | when those things change. I have not had any friendships that | ever lasted very long past graduations, job changes, moves, | retirements, etc. I think that's basically natural, and that | friendships really depend on some outside set of factors that | keep people coming together for the same things. | moonshinefe wrote: | Thanks for the response. That's been kind of my experience | too (hard to keep them when not close / with something in | common). I suppose I'll need to find a new hobby at some | point here and meet people that way. | lordnacho wrote: | I'm not surprised. I'm reaching an age where I feel like I've | seen it all in terms of what can happen to me as a person | (births/deaths/big life events), as well as what can happen in | terms of historical events that affect people's lives (Changes of | leadership, wars, stuff in the news). | | But the thing that seems most important is relationships. Being | able to maintain them with various people is paramount. I'm a bit | younger than the people in the study, and fortunate to have a | very international network, so maybe I rely more on technology to | talk to people, but I've found it's key to write to people to | stay in touch. In terms of day-to-day I also make an effort to do | a gathering now and again. It's pretty easy, I just ping some | people I know from various contexts and pick a place. Also in | terms of close relations I don't find you need to be close in | terms of frequent contact. Writing to someone I've known for a | long time without constantly connection is as familiar as having | the occasional meal with local friends. | | I've also developed a kind of understanding for various | relationships that are a kind of "kindred spirit" relation: | people who exemplify some sort of archetype with whom I identify, | but with whom I have not spent much time. It's a sort of | immediate familiarity that is quite satisfying, eg when you meet | another programmer and you have similar experiences, or another | person who went to your university or comes from the same | country. These are often useful seeds for deeper relationships, | but are also good in and of themselves. | black_puppydog wrote: | I'm definitely not in the "seen it all" phase but I recently, | on a whim, got out a pen and paper and started what I thought | would be a quick one page letter. 8 pages later I realized the | act of writing was as important as the content itself. And the | receiving side seems to have shared the sentiment; the | interaction, slow and async as it was, had a depth of meaning I | wouldn't have anticipated. Kinda hippie dippie and all but true | nonetheless. :) | saiya-jin wrote: | Relationships are important, but this importance varies from | person to person. What would break one (long absence of such) | is a negligible detail for another. Its true that most folks | are wired for some form of them, but some actually thrive in | their absence and focus their energy easier towards their | goals. | | I personally am somewhere in between. I can handle loneliness | remarkably well, way better than most if not all people I know | closely (and this allowed me to do hard very positive actions | in life), but that doesn't prevent me from enjoying occasional | family or friends reunion. But I don't thrive on them and I am | not sad/depressed when lacking them. I love my family just to | be clear and especially my parents, very little to complain | about. | | For example serious adventures can fill this hole more than | nicely. But now my kids are doing their best and the hole is | overflowing a bit. | jimbokun wrote: | This sounds like your personal anecdotal experience at a | specific stage in your life, whereas the study covered many | people over a decades long time frame. | JackFr wrote: | Many wealthy, elite white men predominantly from the | northeast United States. (Yes I know 40 years in they | expanded the study to some local inner city subjects.) | jimbokun wrote: | Still, it's probably the best study of its kind ever | performed. | | Will be interesting to see if there are differences for | other demographics as they continue to expand the scope | of the subjects. But will need to wait decades for those | results. | devy wrote: | This article was published in April 11, 2017. | | Please add the year tag to the title. | | Professor Scott Galloway also mentioned about this study in his | book "The Algebra of Happiness". | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMW6xgPgY4s | kgeist wrote: | The article implies causation, but I'm not sure in which | direction it goes. I can imagine that someone who is chronically | ill will have less energy to maintain relationships. In other | words, if you are healthy, you are more likely to be active in | life in general, including relationships. | LB232323 wrote: | It is really a revelation that love is what makes life | meaningful? | | There is a sweet naivete to a study like this, it invites | compassion. | | Analyzing happiness with this cold academic rigor is just absurd, | it is like a depressed species of alien studying our planet to | figure out why people have happy lives. "Is it genes?" the cold, | analytical mind ponders. It is kind of funny, yet it is tragic, | and so it invites a response. | | Yes, love makes life worth living. Not just relationships, but | love, in its many varied forms. If you are reading this, I love | you. To Ivy League scientists and their objects of study, I love | you as well. You see, God is love, this is a simple truth found | in scripture. Surround yourself in love at all times, and you | will lead a life that is satisfying and resplendent in joy. | tasuki wrote: | You see, I don't believe in God at all. And I think religion is | generally more harmful than helpful. And yet... while the study | was kind of boring, and most of the comments here too, there is | something in your comment that touched me very much. You put a | smile on my face after another difficult day. Thank you. | TremendousJudge wrote: | >You see, God is love, this is a simple truth found in | scripture | | I have read my fair share of traditional religious scripture | and I haven't concluded this at all from the text. I've found | what they call "God" to be at times a very spiteful, cruel, and | unloving entity. If this is what "love" means in these texts, I | don't want to have anything to do with it. | layer8 wrote: | "Love" is not a singular concept, the word refers to a whole | lot of different things, and it's also different from happiness | and longevity (what the study measured). The article also | doesn't mention meaningfulness. What you wrote therefore seems | like a non sequitur. | tasty_freeze wrote: | > God is love, this is a simple truth found in scripture | | I'm not sure which scripture you are talking about. If you are | talking about the Abrahamic line of scripture, you can find | anything you want, as Shakespeare famously said. Because you | are apparently a good person, you focus on the positive aspects | of the message, and that is great. | | But there are people who focus on different parts of the | scripture, or interpret the same passages in a different way, | that lead to injustice and suffering. The fact that there are | so many religious denominations reading the same documents but | coming to different understandings shows that this message is | anything but simple. | | Famously, the Torah describes God's special relationship with | his chosen people. Many people love to take excerpts from this | as God's universal truths, but in fact these were only for the | Jewish people. God had no problem commanding them to commit | rape and genocide against out-groups. The claim that "God is | love" is true only if you erase large parts of that document, | or redefine "love" to be whatever God has commanded there. | the_common_man wrote: | > Yes, love makes life worth living. Not just relationships, | but love, in its many varied forms. If you are reading this, I | love you. To Ivy League scientists and their objects of study, | I love you as well. | | Well, the point is, not all love is equal and some love is | greater than others. At that point, it's up to you to | prioritize accordingly since love requires energy and we all | have finite energy. | krisoft wrote: | > It is really a revelation that love is what makes life | meaningful? | | It does not intends to be a revelation. A study can prove what | everyone always believed all along. People believe all kind of | things, some are true some are false. A properly designed study | shines a dispassionate light at facts in a way which can show | if the common belief was false or not. | | > Analyzing happiness with this cold academic rigor is just | absurd, | | You are entitled to think that. The history of humankind is | full of people being dead sure of themselves while also being | wrong. This is why it's worth to check our assumptions in a | dispassionate way. Especially the things we are sure about. | | > it is like a depressed species of alien studying our planet | to figure out why people have happy lives. | | That is your projection. One can be full of joy, happiness, and | love while still applying logic and dispassionate reasoning to | study a question. | jimbokun wrote: | > It is really a revelation that love is what makes life | meaningful? | | Yes. The original researchers considered all kinds of things | that might correlate to long term health and happiness. They | did not consider quality of relationships as one of them. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-25 23:01 UTC)