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Study: Happiness Won't Extend Your Life After All (latimes.com)
schwit1 writes with good news for fans of living a long and ultimately unfulfilling life. Happy people live longer, a relationship that's been documented in a variety of research studies. But a new paper published in the medical journal Lancet comes to the sad conclusion that happiness isn't responsible for this observed longevity. Instead, the things that make people happy, particularly their good health, are the same things that shield them from premature death. "Happiness and related measures of well-being do not appear to have any direct effect on mortality," the study authors wrote.
And you won't care!
... correlation is not causation!
They said I would live longer if I gave up red meat, dessert, exercised every day, and got married.
But then it occurred to me that it probably just seems longer.
Hoping I'll live a long and unhappy life.
So this is a causation/correlation thing: happiness correlates with longevity, but is not by itself the *cause* of longevity.
From a practical standpoint, this means that techniques to increase one's happiness by psychological means will have no effect on longevity. Things like keeping a journal, or giving daily thanks, and so on.
This raises an interesting point. If longevity correlates with happiness but is not caused by happiness, then it follows that psychological techniques to increase happiness have no effect - else there would be a measure of causation. People who have successfully become happier using the techniques actually got happier due to other lifestyle changes, which increase both happiness and longevity.
(Or taken as a thought problem, suppose everyone took up the psychological techniques to become happier. Would this then invalidate the study?)
So in summary, don't bother trying to change your happiness level by psychological means. If the techniques worked then it would have an effect on one's longevity. Since it doesn't, the conclusion is that the techniques don't work.
Will certainly make it seem like your life is longer. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Warning: depressed people may lead depressingly long lives.
Two things A and B occurring together can have one of these reasons:
1) A is a direct or indirect, exclsive or non-exclusive cause for B.
2) same as 1) with A and B interchanged. I possibly just lost the media croud, but anyway..
3) A and B have a common, direct or indirect, exclusive or non-exclusive, cause C (as in this story).
4) It's just coincidence.
Without further evidence, we just don't know which one it is; and you just jumping to conclusions because you feel like it and then being proven wrong is NOT news.
...get back off my lawn!
Table-ized A.I.
Stress is a big killer for sure.
This is excellent news, not a "sad conclusion" at all.
People can't directly control their level of happiness. But they can affect their level of health, to a degree. It's hard, but certainly easier than attempting to change your happiness set-point. So this result is saying both that (a) longevity is not, as previously thought, dependent on something you can't control, and (b) happiness is easier to control than previously thought.
If I am happy and die with 50 then that is fine. I would also be happy when I reach 90 and been happy all the time. Longevity is not that important. In the end you are dead and there is no sense in being miserable all your life for 90 years, except you are a poet then this is what you like. So you are at least happy that you are so wonderfully miserable.
Even if I don't live longer being happy, I'd still prefer to live a happy life than a miserable one. Happiness is still a worthy goal for its own sake (and I'd probably want a shorter - happier life even if there was an inverse correlation) so I don't see the point of this study.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"The Million Women Study is a prospective study of UK women recruited between 1996 and 2001 and followed electronically for cause-specific mortality."
There's still hope for men, then...
(ducks)
(OK, there's still hope for ducks...)
Garry Knight
The bad news is that suffering won't make you life (and pain) shorter!
The balance of proper scientific evidence suggests that giving up red meat would in fact make your life shorter, less healthy, and less happy. Vegetarians are more prone to depression and a range of diseases. See, for example, http://www.fathead-movie.com/i...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Not sure I'm buying the results of this study.
I think that happiness (however you define it) translates into a lot of behaviors (or avoidance of certain behaviors) that can influence how long you live, or more importantly, how you live. And how you live does have an effect on how long you live, but it can be hard to quantify the big picture.
If you're unhappy you may choose (consciously or unconsciously) to take more "risky" chances, you may choose to engage in behaviors that have statistically worse outcomes, you may take poorer care of yourself in various ways, and so on.
In other words, I think the study is simplistic and provably meaningless. It doesn't really address the follow-on effects of unhappiness and the attendant outcomes.
If you're trying to draw a straight line between "happiness" and "living a long time", I think that's going to fail, but I do think that being happy gives you a better likelihood of living longer because of the overall effect on your life when viewed in context with your choices and behavior.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And it's so hard to live on a vegetarian diet. They tend to be awfully stringy and tough to chew. But if you wrap them in enough bacon, who cares?
Now this sad article makes me want to just off myself. Thanks slashdot
For hire.
Like it, like it.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
it's that stress (too much of it, particularly) shortens it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Do you really classify pigs, chickens and fish as vegetables?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The secret to a long life is, no smoking, no sex, no flesh, no alcohol, no fast cars, no adventurous travel, no masturbation, pray and no tv.
It might not prolong your life, but it sure will fell like an eternity.
You simply *must* find the correct marinade. It varies by the region and type of range they matured in.
Finally, been holding that in for ages now...
Married men live longer, but then again, so do unhappy men. Correlation? Causation?
But then it occurred to me that it probably just seems longer.
Hehehehe, nice! That is why I eat read meat, do not exercise and did not get married. I am not much into dessert though, so some subjective life extension may apply.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The science was settled. What happened?
Just another day in Paradise
People should concentrate on living a quality life, not squeezing every last second of life they can out of their bodies.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
From TFA: "Findings were similarly null for related measures such as stress or lack of control."
Humans have evolved to be the worst-tasting animal on the planet. Even sharks spit us out nine times out of ten, and they'll eat anything.
It's the defense mechanism that lets us waste our time building civilizations instead of staying in caves worrying about saber-toothed tigers.
Nonsense. They're delicious and nutritious. Tastes just like chicken.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Dubious.... there is a long established correlation between stress and heart disease.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Unhealthy lifestyle would likely, eventually, make most people unhappy (unless they like discomfort and vastly reduced abilities). And if a particular unhealthy lifestyle never makes the individual unhappy, they may still live long. My neighbor smoked (it made him happy) since he was 16, and lived until 96! Did a gene make smoking NOT unhealthy for him?! It seems to me that this happy effect statistic, and anything related, is just one of those useless statistics; which appears totally in need of context! (There! Now I'm happy!)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Humans have evolved to be the worst-tasting animal on the planet. Even sharks spit us out nine times out of ten, and they'll eat anything.
Mandatory cartoon reference: The Far Side, "In the days before soap". From memory, shows a dinosaur (typical Larson anachronistic humour) spitting out a caveman, with the speech bubble "Ptooey".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The balance of proper scientific evidence suggests that giving up red meat would in fact make your life shorter, less healthy, and less happy. Vegetarians are more prone to depression and a range of diseases. See, for example, http://www.fathead-movie.com/i...
Except for the part where
"For depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and somatoform disorders and syndromes we found that on average the adoption of the vegetarian diet follows the onset of mental disorders." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Giving up red meat doesn't necessarily make someone a vegetarian. There are meats other than red meat.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay