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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

I agree that it's a pretty weak article. However, I 100% absolutely and totally believe it.

What I feel like I've come to realize is that pride is at the center of it all. Pride is what makes people "quiet" about it , because people don't like admit that they aren't happy. People don't want to spend $500 on a phone, be locked for 2+year, and then admit its a POS (yes, some people do, but far from the majority). People don't want to admit that they hate their job to their closest friends and coworkers unless it's clear everyone else feels the same way.

People lie to themselves (although, they certainly know they are doing it), so that they don't have to admit that they aren't perfect...it's ego...and it's silly (it's the same thing that makes people buy a 2nd car, or a bigger house, because their friends got a 2nd car or their brother bought a new house..)

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There's also a certain amount of practicality. Better to be cheerful about your POS phone you're locked into for 2+ years than bellyache about it for 2+ years.

True..and I'm probably a glass-half-empty sorta guy.

But in my own experience, pride does still play a part in it, it isn't about trying to be positive, it's about not wanting to seem like a fool and getting fleeced.

Maybe pride is just the reason I'm not happy, and not everyone else's reason :)

Well, for what it's worth, I think you're 100% correct.

What shocked me was...

1) it's almost impossible to talk with someone about themselves, about mistakes they've made or about things they could do better (unless they brought it up).

2) almost nobody cares about "the truth". They only care about what makes them happy.

Those two may as well be laws of nature.

This isn't intended as a response, but actually the opposite of those two are like the defining characteristics of me.

I came to the first one after reading journal articles about 'inherency' (debate jargon for the reason a problem continues to persist), where I started think much more in terms of external causes of problems I had rather than internal ones. That's also made me much more empathetic

The second one came to me through an old debate coach, my first mentor. I've actually found that 'seeking the truth' is a really fantastic experience, and contagious too; its the reason my roommate comes home from class and reads academic studies about fitness and nutrition.

1) it's almost impossible to talk with someone about themselves, about mistakes they've made or about things they could do better (unless they brought it up).

People usually aren't seeking validation or criticism from others, especially if they don't know or work with these people. Offering these apropos of nothing is kind of rude.

2) almost nobody cares about "the truth". They only care about what makes them happy.

What does this mean? Who is the arbiter of "truth," then?

Cognitive dissonance. Dan ariely talks about it in "predictably irrational". It's the same reason people don't often change dentists because changing dentist after putting up with all the pain and discomfort that comes with a dentist means you made a wrong decision. Same thing with hazing etc for Frats, sororities. You go through it and because it was so miserable you equate the end result to having more value and justify the hazing. Great book for entrepreneurs as you can really see just how often our ego comes into play with our decision making.

The first part of what you talk about sounds like post purchase rationalization. It's a bias much less nefarious than mere ego.

The second part is the poisonous way most live their lives. Relatively - i.e. the core determinant of many people's happiness is relative and not absolute income.

The second part is the poisonous way most live their lives. Relatively - i.e. the core determinant of many people's happiness is relative and not absolute income.

If this theory is correct, we should discourage people from discussing income distribution. Whenever a reporter writes an article about rising income inequality, they are contributing to the problem.

That's open to debate. Inequalities of income distribution are pretty visible anyway: whether discussion of the topic exacerbates people's unhappiness with the situation depends whether discussion of the topic helps them reconcile themselves to the normality of being unable to keep up with the Joneses, or whether it makes them feel angrier and more impotent than they actually are.

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