gjm comments on Buying happiness - Less Wrong Discussion
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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).