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Lumifer comments on Buying happiness - Less Wrong Discussion
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It's possible to debate the pros and cons of each suggestion, but I think that what rankles me is the overall theme of shortsightedness. Be a happy little sheep, live day by day without worries about far future, don't deviate from the herd, don't worry your pretty little head about trying to optimise things....
It could very well be that being more shortsighted really does make you happier. Or that lots of moves in the shortsighted direction lead to greater happiness although some don't (e.g., saving more may well be a win[1] if you look at the reasonably long term).
[1] I hope it is...
It seems like the methodology of many of the studies they cite systematically neglects long-term effects. That's probably at least partly because long-term effects are harder to measure -- and make the study more expensive to do and take longer before you get to publish it. It seems likely that there's a general short-term bias in this sort of research.
That advice goes back to at least Jesus.
However at this point I will have to ask "Make whom happier?" People are different (and in a high-dimensional space, too) so producing this kind of advice for an average human is both useless and misguided. I would believe it more if it came conditional on certain personality characteristics, for example.
By the way, who were the subjects of DGW questionnaires? The usual WEIRD people?
I bet (p=0.8) there's something along those lines predating Jesus in the Buddhist tradition.
Yes, different people will be made happy by different things. The studies DGW cite were mostly done by other people rather than by DGW. I share your suspicion that too many of the subjects were young healthy well-off well-educated Western psychology students or the like.
I wouldn't be surprised.
With a tiny bit of effort you can drag Ecclesiastes in here, too (not on the side of enjoy the here and now, but on the side of planning and effort are futile).
At least back to 23 BC.
Carpe diem is more a predecessor of Nike's Just Do It, rather than "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow".
That might be what it has become in present-day popular culture, but the line in the original poem did continue with "quam minimum credula postero".