The second link, again, is conditions that we would find miserable, but some people like to fight.

But thanks for the first link. This indeed "flies against everything we thought we knew ten years ago", or at least everything that I thought I knew, so apparently my understanding (that happiness has more to do with one's relative status within society than anything absolute) is ten years out of date.

However, most of this (all but one paragraph of the second link) is still comparing within civilised societies, whereas

assuming that nature tuned their happiness levels "correctly"

would be for uncivilised people. So what I'd really like to see is a debunking of the "original affluent society"-like claim that hunter-gatherers have happy lives. (I know that Sahlins's research doesn't really hold up, but that just brings me back to simply not knowing the relative happiness levels.)