Matthew Henty

Authors@Google: Sonja Lyubomirsky

Research shows that happy people:

• Nurture and enjoy their social relationships
• Are comfortable expressing gratitude
• Are often the first to help others
• Practice optimism about the future
• Savor pleasures and live in the present moment
• Make physical activity a habit
• Are often spiritual or religious
• Are deeply committed to lifelong goals

Kind of obvious – “hokey” even – but supposedly backed up by experimental research.

Happiness takes work.

Measuring happiness, subjective, ask questions:
- Are you a happy person?
- Life satisfaction – how do you feel about your life right now (terrible to delighted)

Experiments:

Counting one’s blessings
- A gratitude journal, weekly vs  three times a week vs control
- Increase in self-reported gratitude, but only in the once a week group.
- Increase in reported happiness – only in the once a week group.
(Why? – three times a week is too often, not fresh, a chore. Effort, hard to do every few days so makes you feel worse. Too hard to think of.)
- Works on average, but not for everyone. Diagnostic tool in book to help identify what is likely to work for you.

Committing acts of kindness
- Chinese proverb – if you want happiness for an hour, take a nap; for a day, go fishing; for a month, get married; for a year, inherit a fortune; for a lifetime, help somebody else.
- three or nine acts of kindness a week. High variety, low variety and control.
- Only high variety worked, otherwise boring?

Effort is important.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky at Less Wrong has an interesting post called, “Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism” which puts the endless debates about belief, atheism and “new atheism” in a little bit of context. He ends up defending Dawkins and Hitchins too, which perhaps makes me sympathetic to his argument.

His argument is that “Atheism” is really made up of two distinct components, which one might call “untheism” and “antitheism”.

Where,

A pure “untheist” would be someone who grew up in a society where the concept of God had simply never been invented – where writing was invented before agriculture, say, and the first plants and animals were domesticated by early scientists.  In this world, superstition never got past the hunter-gatherer stage – a world seemingly haunted by mostly amoral spirits – before coming into conflict with Science and getting slapped down.

…..

So if you come up to the Untheists and say:

“The universe was created by God -”

“By what?”

“By a, ah, um, God is the Creator – the Mind that chose to make the universe -”

“So the universe was created by an intelligent agent.  Well, that’s the standard Simulation Hypothesis, but do you have actual evidence confirming this?  You sounded very certain -”

“No, not like the Matrix!  God isn’t in another universe simulating this one, God just… is.  He’s indescribable.  He’s the First Cause, the Creator of everything -”

“Okay, that sounds like you just postulated an ontologically basic mental entity.  And you offered a mysterious answer to a mysterious question.  Besides, where are you getting all this stuff?  Could you maybe start by telling us about your evidence – the new observation you’re trying to interpret?”

“I don’t need any evidence!  I have faith!”

“You have what?“

And at this very moment the Untheists have become, for the first time, Atheists.  And what they just acquired, between the two points, was Antitheism – explicit arguments against explicit theism.  You can be an Untheist without ever having heard of God, but you can’t be an Antitheist.

…..

There’s nothing inherently fulfilling about arguing against Goddism – in a society of Untheists, no one would ever give the issue a second thought…….  Yet in the long run, the goal is an Untheistic society, not an Atheistic one – one in which the question “What’s left, when God is gone?” is greeted by a puzzled look and “What exactly is missing?”

And as for the claim that religion is compatible with Reason – well, is there a single religious claim that a well-developed, sophisticated Untheist culture would not reject?  When they have no reason to suspend judgment, and no anti-epistemology of separate magisteria, and no established religions in their society to avoid upsetting?

Exactly correct.

And lets not get into an argument about how good it is that we have belief, how much better it makes us feel. It isn’t real, so please can we just move on?

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• I am on the verge of true anger with Sky. Please give me a MAC. Do not play games, and do not transfer me to SALES again, you bastards. #
• On hold for no discernible reason – at 5p a minute, plus a 6p connection charge. At least I seem to be through to the right place. #
• Just been offered free line rental, cheaper broadband and cheap Sky Talk Unlimited. Which is a good deal. Shall I take it? #
• Finally got a MAC, but it took an hour. I will use it, even after being offered a great deal by their customer retention people. Too late! #
• Jobs done. Suppose I'll watch the cricket then! #

I want to get a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) from Sky Broadband, so that I can sign up with a cheaper offer from O2. And so that when it is sorted out it will be possible for me to cancel Sky without losing the internet.

This should not be difficult. They even have an online form to fill in. Which mysteriously crashes if you want to cancel a service. Of course they have a really snazzy online, automatic system for upgrading to the next ridiculously expensive HD package or whatever.

So I phone. And after very carefully following the menu options I speak to someone, who takes my details, performs a ridiculous security check and then informs me that I have gone through to sales. SO WHY TAKE ALL MY DETAILS WHEN YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T HELP ME!!! Then transfers me to what sounds like some guy at a desk – not a call centre who gives me another number to phone. Doesn’t even transfer me. And that number turns out to be for the sales hotline. Eh?

Try again….

Get into a discussion about how they have the spelling of my surname, go through a different set of “security” questions. He has to talk to his supervisor. Why? Why am I on hold for this long, this is costing me 5p a minute. Then told I need to be put through the the MAC Code (er, that be the Migration Authorisation Code Code would it?) department. On hold again. 5p a minute, “thanks for waiting!…….thanks for calling sky and thanks for waiting!……thanks for waiting!….”.

Get through to a nice person called Jenny. Who makes a brave attempt to get me to sign up to Sky Talk. And does a good job too, with 12 months free line rental thrown in, which is £120 of free money whatever way you look at it.

But it took an hour to get to this point from first filling in the online form. And I have my MAC, so I think I will use it. Just because I am so annoyed at this waste of my time.

• Feels much too early to be awoken by the child, but much to do before heading to the midlands to visit friends. #
• A great day in Warwick: http://twitpic.com/a5f0i #

• Feels much too early to be awoken by the child, but much to do before heading to the midlands to visit friends. #
• A great day in Warwick: http://twitpic.com/a5f0i #

• heading into #opentech, something to look forward to in every session. #