hannahelisabeth 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: hannahelisabeth 13 November 2012 03:48:31PM 0 points [-]

Sure, that's true. I suppose you could have a split-brain person who is happy in one hemisphere and not in the other, or some such type of situation. I guess it just depends on what you're looking for when you ask "is someone happy?" If you want a subjective feeling, then self-report data will be reliable. If you're looking for specific physiological states or such, then self-report data may not be necessary, and may even contradict your findings. But it seems suspect to me that you would call it happiness if it did not correspond to a subjective feeling of happiness.