[dosinga]

I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method. The paper referred to does not. It uses a special US dataset for states and a much smaller global dataset for every other country, then treats the results as if they measure the same thing. This setup almost guarantees that US states look unusually good. The authors present this as evidence, but it mostly reflects differences in survey design rather than real differences in wellbeing. In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.

[rkagerer]

In case others are wondering what the one simple question is (called the Cantril Ladder):

“Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”

Personally feels a little more convoluted than just asking "How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?"

[staticman2]

I'm not a psychology expert but from stuff I read I bet the reason they don't ask "How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?" is they tried that and found the same person would give different answers from day to day and moment to moment based on what is going on this very minute.

I'd also bet that they found the above "convoluted" question was one that led to the same people giving more consistent answers from day to day and moment to moment.

Even if I'm wrong I hope you see this is a much thornier problem than just asking a question and assuming the answer tells us anything about the person taking the survey.

[seizethecheese]

But it needs to be convoluted. The problem with the simpler version is the word happy needs to be translated both culturally and more literally.

[Aperocky]

Happy have so many definition that I like the question better, it is much less ambiguous than "happy".

My happiness changes depending on many external factor and varies by hour and days, but the answer to the former question aren't going to change quite as often, would have probably provided the same answer over the entire year.

[arjie]

What an interesting question. It would seem intuitively that a population with a limited band of socioeconomic mobility must answer 10 and one with a wide band of mobility must answer 0. I wonder whether that is true.

[tobr]

I have to say, I don’t understand what ”for you” means in ”best/worst possible life for you”. At first I read it roughly as ”given the fundamental unchanging circumstances of your life, such as where and when you were born, who your parents are, and your basic health” but maybe they mean something like ”in your subjective perspective on what is good/bad”?

[bossyTeacher]

>"How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?"

Your question is likely to be interpreted as you asking the person's current MOOD hence different answers on different times are likely. While you are thinking of a less changing wider concept.

The social context is important too, there is a social stigma around admitting that you are not happy which will play into this question too.

[connorshinn]

One possible flaw in this question - I really don't like heights, so the idea of being at the top of a ladder does NOT equate to being happy for me.

Now I know it's a metaphor and not a literal ladder, but it does make me wonder if that association skews the results at all..

[sysguest]

"on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”

hmm maybe answering 10 means: I only expect my life to down-roll from now on?

[greygoo222]

That's a necessary feature. The best translation of "happy" in different countries can have very different connotations.

[scotty79]

If I feel hopeless, I might think that I live best possible life for me (and answer 10) despite feeling deeply unhappy about it.

[crimsoneer]

I'm assuming part of this is it's not always asked in English...?

[darth_avocado]

I am yet to be convinced that 4000 data points are sufficient to extrapolate how happy 2.8B people are in the world. (India and China) Especially when it deals with a complex topic as happiness without taking any cultural differences into account.

People on HN tend to argue it’s sufficient data to be statistically significant, but I don’t see how.

[a_victorp]

Came to say the same thing. The author criticizes the happiness report methodology than immediately cites a report full of methodological problems

[awb0]

One way to interpret this is not as the author's endorsement of the other report, but as a demonstration of how fragile these happiness rankings are to perturbations in methodology / definition.

[kansface]

> I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method.

The simplicity is nice, but for the (probable) fact that suicide attempts/rates and emigration don't correspond... so lets not call it happiness.

[Karrot_Kream]

The substack references Nilsson et al [1] in regards to criticisms of the Cantril Ladder. It's a pretty easy to read paper so I highly suggest just reading it.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52939-y.pdf

[testing22321]

The US never gets a single city in the top 50 “world’s most livable cities” ranking.

Lousy public transport, bankrupting healthcare and education, mass shootings, traffic, pollution.

Nobody is fooled into thinking Americans are happy.

[Natsu]

> In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.

It's a simple question, sure, but it's not clear that it's a very meaningful one, even if other approaches aren't necessarily any better. When I think of the word happiness, I don't exactly associate it with suicide or rarely smiling.

[stickfigure]

"Pick a random number between 1 and 10" is also a clear and consistent method, and also not particularly meaningful.

The point I took from the article is that we should stop paying attention to this meaningless metric. I didn't read it as a request to replace it with another metric.

[Sam6late]

I would like to rewrite it, replacing desires with hormones, since they are the drivers for desires, when young one could jump a wall, risking his/her life to see the one we desire, then in their fifties on a nude beach everybody looks and feels mundane. The defining experience of our age seems to be biochemical hunger. We're flooded with hormones that tell us to crave more, even when we already have more than we need. We're starved for balance while stimuli multiply around us. Our dopamine peaks and crashes without reason; our cortisol hums in the background like faulty wiring.

We live with a near-universal imbalance: the reign of thin hormones. These thin hormones promise satisfaction but never deliver. They spike and vanish, leaving behind only the impulse to chase the next hit. Philosophers once spoke of desires that change the self; today, our neurochemistry is being short-circuited before the self even enters the conversation.

A thick hormone is slower, steadier. It reshapes you in the process of living it—like the oxytocin that comes from trust, or the endorphins that build with persistence. But thin hormones—those dopamine flickers from notifications, likes, and swipes—do nothing but reproduce themselves. They deliver sensation without transformation, stimulation without growth.

Modern systems have perfected the art of hijacking our endocrine circuitry. Social media fires the neurons of connection without the chemistry of friendship. Porn delivers the hormonal spike of intimacy without the vulnerability that generates oxytocin. Productivity apps grant the dopamine signature of accomplishment with nothing actually achieved. We’ve built an economy not of meaning, but of molecules. And none of it seems to be making us more alive.

[VonGuard]

Imagine that, the United States is attempting to pervert truth into utter and complete lies. It's almost as if this is the only brand the United States has left.

At this point in my life if I see something with United States looks good compared to the rest of the world I just immediately assume it is a lie. Because the United States is nothing but lies and greed anymore. We cannot even claim innovation as a central motivator anymore.