bigjeff5 comments on Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased) - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 September 2007 08:05PM

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Comment author: bigjeff5 28 February 2011 02:54:49AM 1 point [-]

My understanding is that happiness is a product of biochemistry and neuroanatomy, and doesn't have to inherently correlate with any knowledge, experience, or heuristic.

Hopefully Anonymous never claimed there was no connection between experiences and biochemistry, only that the two weren't inherently linked.

If they were inherently linked, then you could not have happiness without certain experiences, and those same experiences would always increase your happiness. Personal experience and the fact that clinical depression exists tells me this cannot be true. The fact that a chemical imbalance alone can eliminate your happiness completely regardless of what your actual experience may be is proof that happiness is primarily a function of biochemistry.

The fact that certain experiences make us more happy shows that experiences can influence our biochemistry, but the two are most certainly not inherently linked.