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Lumifer comments on Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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True, but only partially true. The stable base level, as you know, varies. There are people with high-happiness stable level and people with low-happiness stable level. These people look and behave very differently in real life. The high-base people look and behave happy at their neutral setting I don't see any reason to believe that it's just outwards manifestations which do not reflect the internal state. The low-base people are, in contrast, much less happy at their neutral setting.
So yes, on the one hand happiness/suffering is relative to your base state; but on the other hand there is an absolute scale as well and high-base people are happier than low-base people.
It's hard to say what goes on in other people's heads, but my self-reported happiness would be an assessment of my well-being relative to what I regard as my cultural norm, whereas my experienced happiness is a different value entirely.
I base my belief that this is the norm for humans on the fact that life satisfaction decreases are correlated with suicide rates irrespective of the absolute value of life satisfaction (although certain factors can have an inhibitive effect); that is, wealthy nations, which generally have higher self-reported happiness levels, also have high suicide rates. Their high base level of happiness, if this were the same variable as experienced happiness, should otherwise offset the suffering they experience, which does not appear to happen.
People's social behavior is more predicated on their perceived relationship to the local/current social group than the state of their internal variables. I don't base this on any study, but rather personal observation.
I'm not talking about evaluating one's own internal state. I'm talking about outward signs.
I know both high-base and low-base people from, more or less, the same cultural circles. It's not that they would answer the question "How happy are you?" differently -- I don't know, I haven't asked. It's just that the high-base people smile and laugh a lot, are prone to engaging in spontaneous fun, are generally comfortable with life. And the low-base people tend to have a characteristic disapproving expression on their faces (which will actually mold their face by middle age), whine and grumble a lot, and find life generally unpleasant.
Note that here I'm talking about, basically, long-term averages. In the short term high-base people can and will get unhappy and depressed; low-base people can and will get excited and joyful. But both will revert to the mean -- I'm not talking about bipolar people who will oscillate between highs and lows, they are a separate category.