Tuesday, July 05, 2005

The happiness pollution

From an email to Ramesh after a long discussion of the amount of money people are willing to blow up to keep them 'happy'.

Babs,
Why does Venky believe blowing up 20K per night on a hotel room is ok and Raju is dissatisfied with a 1 lac pm job ?

Most people are hellbent on increasing their prosperity. As all these people try to upgrade their standards of living, the invisible hand of the market obliges by enmeshing them in an ever larger, ever denser web of investment and production. You have bigger, costlier hotels, rasams at 200 rupees a bowl and jam packed Mariott hotels.

What drives the world ?

Human nature itself, the deep desire to amass resources, to keep up with the neighbours, and if possible, to leave them in the dust, drives the huge economic engine that is transforming the world.

Are you satisfied with what you've become in life ? That depends on how your neighbour/relative/friend/colleague is faring. And this oneupmanship is what is driving the world economy. Scary ain't it ?

There are two ways you can increase your happiness - one way diminishes the happiness of others and the other boosts the happiness of others.


The happiness that pollutes....
When you score one up over your neighbour/colleague/friend, your increased happiness is at his cost. He feels miserable. This has been proven in quite a few surveys. This is an expensive way to be happy as you need to posses the biggest/curviest/costliest stuff to heep you high. Even Raju's 2 lac pm pay won't keep him happy as soon as he learns his friend earns double that. Venky would feel miserable about a relative who vacations at London.

Social status = Breeding rights

Evolution has hardwired our minds are hardwired to equal social status with reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, if you are not higher up on the totem pole than your peer group, you don't get to breed. There is only one top spot on the totem pole. Social status is a finite resource, and anyone’s gain must come at someone else’s expense.

That is why even when millions of americans become temporarily happy after having bought their yacht's/SUV's the net happiness of the country has actually decreased over the past 40 years. Pursuing happiness through monetary gain is essentially a zero-sum game. Your temporary gain is someone else's temporary loss.

Do Gold taps and Whale penises make you happy ?

The Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, insisted that the taps on his yacht be made of solid gold and that the yacht’s bar stools be covered with the ultrasoft foreskin of a whale’s penis. Let us assume that Onassis impressed people enough to raise his social status, and his sense of well-being. To the extent that he succeeded, he lowered the relative social standing of rival shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos. In Greek society as a whole, there was no net utilitarian gain. Humanity is famous for pursuing things, such as power and riches, that don’t bring lasting happiness.

Are the rich crazy ?

This is why the rich work so hard at getting richer even if it isn’t making them any happier and actually is making a few of them crazier. In a sense, their behaviour is not as irrational as it sounds.

Much of what gratifies people about higher income is that it boosts their relative standing in society. To the extent that this is true -- that our happiness comes from comparing our station in life with that of other people -- then within a society, one person’s gain is another person’s loss.

The finite happiness pie
Raju/Venky , in scrapping for income and status, in working overtime to afford that Ford Explorer, may be jostling for pieces of a more-or-less finite happiness pie. They might actually be better off by taking time off to spend with their friends/family. Those who pursue happiness via money and status are playing a zero-sum game. And they cannot afford to cut back. If you cut back on your work hours, your income and status might slip; you could lose an increment of happiness to a rival. That is the paradox: If everyone in an affluent society cut back on their work so their relative incomes didn’t change, they could all spend more time with friends -- and the society's overall happiness would grow.

Yet it may not be in the best interest of any one person to take the initiative. What we need is a way to halt the individually rational but collectively futile status-seeking arms race and use the time to pursue happiness more wisely.

Minimizing the happiness pollution
The alternative is simple. When you decide to focus on things which do not need comparision to make you feel good ( reading/writing/spending time with friends(not bragging), giving stuff away to make you happy rather than accumulating more to make yoyu happy etc) you do not cause happiness pollution. And this way to attain happiness is almost free.

Less and less bang for your buck.

Money does indeed bring happiness, till a certain point. As with all things, the bang you receive for your buck steadily decreases. The first handful of roasted cashew would taste like heaven - the 50th won't. The utility value of almost anything steadily decreases as you accumulate more and more of the stuff. Money is no exception. Once you attains a fairly comfortable standard of living, more income brings little, if any, additional happiness.

So babs .. that's all there to it. It is good you are off the treadmill. Stay that way and don't get caught in the arms race even if you get a couple of lacs at Planet Asia. And it is not me speaking - it is Martin Seligman .

More on it here...

So much more to find out....

Science Mag talks about the biggst questions to keep us busy for the next few hundred years. I've tried commenting on some them below...

> What Is the Universe Made Of?
It looked simple - Hydrogen which eventually cooked up all the visible matter. Then scientists tell us that the visible matter accounts for less than 15% of the mass of the Universe. The rest is thought to be 'dark' matter - whatever that means.

> What is the Biological Basis of Consciousness?
What distinguishes humans from a collection of cells ? Consciousness ? Soul ? Or just a collection of memories ? Does a zygote have a soul ? Or is it created when the first memories are laid down ?


> Why Do Humans Have So Few Genes?
Earlier it was thought humans have over 100,000 genes. We now know it takes less than 25,000 to spec out a human. We actually have a hundred times more in our chromosomes -mostly junk, and old forgotten copies like the old files cluttering up your hard disk.


> Can the Laws of Physics Be Unified?
Quantum theory deals with the very small. Relativity deals with the very large. Both are surprisingly accurate and yet not unified into one theory yet.

> How Much Can Human Life Span Be Extended?
There is only so much copies you can take from an original. Every second our body is built anew and the process becomes less efficient over time. Will transferring our memories to a storage medium and relying on prosthetics allow us to live forever ? Or would we learn to biologically alter our bodies to keep the going for a few centuries more ?


> Are we Alone in the Universe?
Or universes ? It is very likely we are not alone. With countless stars and countless universes, it would be amazing if only we have won the cosmic jackpiot.

> What Can Replace Cheap Oil -- and When?
Oil is a crude solution to keep the world going. Messy, polluting and noisy. Elegant solutions like Trees ( relying on solar power) or nuclear fusion might just be a few decades away.

Is ours the only universe?
Possibly not. If one universe can pop out of nothing, trillions of others can pop up too. Our universe need not be the only 'chosen one'.


What is the nature of black holes?
Black holes are the place where the two large theories of physics collide - The quantum theory and the theory of relativity. WHat exactly happens is unclear and probably will remain unclear till we hit upon an unified theory.


What is gravity?
How is it transmitted ? Do 'gravitons' exist ? Can it be blocked/bent/reflected ? no one knows.

Can we predict how proteins will fold?
Imagine a large beaded elastic band, with beads of varying sizes. Once the stretching fore is removed, the elastic band curls up into one shape from the millions available to it. As the shape of a protein molecule is crucial in its functioning, we need to understand what shapes are possible and why.

Why are some genomes really big and others quite compact?
The puffer fish genome is 400 million bases; one lungfish's is 133 billion bases long. Are these extra genomes merely junk ? Does'nt more information equal more complexity ?

What is all that "junk" doing in our genomes?
Our chromosomes are packed with junk, acquired over a few hundred million years of evolution. How long can junk continue to accumulate and is there an auto-purge mechanism to clean out this junk ?

Can cancers be controlled rather than cured?
Can you quarantine them ? Or starve them off by blocking their supplies ?

Why do we sleep?
Is it just to keep us immobile and safe in the dark ? Or does it give time for our brains to sort and file information ?

Why do we dream?
Scientists believe that brain activity during REM sleep--when dreams occur--is crucial for learning. So is the brain trying out various simulation exercises and remembers the successful outcomes ?