Philosophy Now Forum

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... iness.html

I have to say this is a bunch of moronic nonsense!

We have a good wealthfare system protecting many from ruin, thus we eliminate much uncertainty and paranoia.

Free education, free hospital, excellent community office support, good pay, good equality, when you are born you have the opportunity to become anything just as long as you put your mind to it, that's a far cry from what other countries has to offer.

Of course it's bollocks, it's The Daily Fail.

Incidentally Japan tops the charts for "happiness" (whatever the hell that actually means, and that is of course an issue in itself) far more often than any other European countries do, you don't see some tabloid hack misrepresenting science to suggest the Japanese are genetically happy. It just so happens that a fish diet tends to promote better brain function, but to say that is cause not correlation is misguided. You could say the Japanese tend on average to live longer than their other Western counterparts, because they eat more fish oils (hence more poly unsaturated or monounsaturated fats which are less linked with cholesterol) and less saturated fat though. That would be cause, and that would be valid.

As you say good job income and good public welfare are correlations, they do not imply better mental health per se or more "happiness", but they would explain why people are less miserable in general and that is all. That's a long way from suggesting there is a genetic cause. Utter bunk from the gutter press as usual.

Well, genes may not work to cause happiness, but evolutionarily, they can explain statistical tendencies to happiness.

So... the question is not whether you believe in genes as a cause, but whether you believe in the story of evolution.

That was quite ambiguous VoT, are you saying you don't believe in genes, or that you don't believe the "story" of evolution or both or neither. Could you clarify?

I think I get the gist, some "happiness" traits are of course genetic which few would doubt statistically, but you kind of lost me in the second sentence. Probably just being dense, but there's no harm in asking.

Blaggard wrote:That was quite ambiguous VoT, are you saying you don't believe in genes, or that you don't believe the "story" of evolution or both or neither. Could you clarify?

I think I get the gist, some "happiness" traits are of course genetic which few would doubt statistically, but you kind of lost me in the second sentence. Probably just being dense, but there's no harm in asking.

I think of evolution as a bit of a detective story. It hints to where actual real things that matter may be, but it has nothing of value to tell us itself. The clues are not the cause, you could say, and evolutionary theory is not prediction but suggestion. Sometimes those suggestions helps us, and some times they don't, but for a scientist it can help as a guiding line for inquiry.

And no, I don't believe genes cause happiness, though it can certainly help if your life is full of certain situations that respond quite well to those genes, and some societies will be generally good for general tendencies in genes across populations (some societies might work quite well with "human nature" you could say). Denmark is not much more wealthy than the US (they are pretty equal), but the average Dane has a lot less to worry about and a lot more to look forward to than the more stressful and problematic American life.

People in Cuba live long lives too. Could it be salsa dancing and sunshine ?