• The New York Times: “If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, You May Be a Little Bit Happier“
• The Wall Street Journal: “Money Buys Happiness“
• WSJ blogs: “Money Can, In Fact, Buy Happiness“
• The L.A. Times: “Money can buy happiness. Here’s how.“
• The Atlantic: “Yes, Money Does Buy Happiness: 6 Lessons from the Newest Research on Income and Well-Being“
• Forbes: “Mom Was Wrong – Money Does Buy Happiness”
• The Daily Mail: “Turns out you can buy happiness! New research shows the richer are the happier you’ll be“
• Reason: “Can Money Buy Happiness After All?“

Does money buy happiness, then? Everyone seems to be reporting - over and over – that a new, groundbreaking, and surprising study shows that money = happiness. Is our common wisdom wrong on this topic – or is there perhaps some ideal income range that we should be seeking?

• The Huffington Post: “Perfect Income for Happiness Around $161,000“
• Time Magazine in Sept. 2010: “Study: Money Buys Happiness When Income Is $75,000“
• Time Magazine in April 2012: “Study: Earning $50,000 Can Bring People Real Happiness“

What in the hell is going on here? Let’s see if we can’t untangle the mess of overly-conclusive newspaper headlines and find the truth.

First, let’s think about how researchers gather their data. If you wanted to know whether an action or object made someone happy, what would you do? The easiest and cheapest method is, of course, to ask them. Most of the articles above are based on “research” that was more survey than science. The problem with asking people about what makes them happy is simple: what we think would make us happy and what would actually make us happy are rarely the same thing.

When you ask someone how happy they are now compared to 5 years ago, they’ll often start by thinking about their financial situation 5 years ago. If their financial situation has improved, they’ll probably say they are happier now. Things change if you ask someone how happy they are, and then ask them the same question 5 years later.

The way you survey people can dramatically alter your results. If you ask people how much money they make first, then ask about happiness, their answers will correlate more closely with income. If you ask people second, that correlation weakens. If you ask people about their friends and family first, the correlation weakens further. Coming to a definitive conclusion about what makes people happy is difficult when we ourselves aren’t reliable judges of our own happiness.

The second problem with the headlines above is a little more complicated. Whether money can bring happiness depends largely upon how one defines “happiness.” Is it life satisfaction? Well-being? A lack of misery and suffering? Researchers have historically asked people to rate their “satisfaction with life,” believing that “happiness” is a vague and ambiguous word. Surveying satisfaction with life tells us something, but “satisfaction” has a lot more in common with “contentment” than it does with “joy.”

Finally, journalists are largely to blame for misrepresenting scientists. Rarely will a legitimate scientific psychologist or sociologist push out a paper claiming to have proven that money buys happiness. The papers usually end with a line like, “our findings show that self-reported life satisfaction is positively correlated with income level, but more research is required.”

Reporters often change “correlated with” tp “caused by,” which is not at all what the scientists are saying. Sure, people who make more money say they’re happier, but why? Could it be that happier people are more motivated and optimistic, and thus more likely to take risks and tackle problems at work? Shawn Achor thinks that could be part of it. Could it be that there’s a third variable causing both happiness and higher income? Could something like high intelligence or confidence leads to both happiness and wealth? Could it be that the answer is some extremely complex concoction of factors?

The answer is most likely that happiness is some complex mixture of the above.

So, How DOES Money Impact Happiness

To really answer this question, we have to find a reliable method of measuring happiness and then track the same people over time in what’s called a longitudinal study. We’d then also have to adjust for variables that we know about, which is amazingly difficult for such a complex question.

We don’t currently have a way to objectively measure a person’s happiness, so we have to rely on self-reporting. This alone makes it impossible to come to definite conclusions about what makes us happy. Instead, we can only study how happy we think we are over time.

The fact is that right now, we’re still learning about money’s role in happiness. If anyone tries to tell you differently, they’re probably taking the research too far. Take, for example, the following premature conclusion from the brilliant Daniel Kahneman at TED. (Note that while I’m criticizing the premature conclusion, this is still one of my favorite talks ever. Make sure you watch it.)

“60,000 dollars a year, people are unhappy, and they get progressively unhappier the poorer they get. Above that, we get an absolutely flat line. I mean I’ve rarely seen lines so flat. Clearly, what is happening is money does not buy you experiential happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery, and we can measure that misery very, very clearly. In terms of the other self, the remembering self, you get a different story. The more money you earn, the more satisfied you are.”

The venerable Dr. Kahneman should be forgiven for using “happiness” instead of what they actually studied: self-reported life satisfaction. What we can say is that (on average) self-reported life satisfaction rises as income rises to meet basic needs (about $60k in the USA), and from there it falls flat. The answer might not be as satisfying, but it’s also a lot more honest about what we actually know.

Let’s look back at the

Does money buy happiness? 

People tend to say that they’re more satisfied with life if they can pay the bills, so $60-70k is probably a goal worth shooting for. That said, unless you think happiness is exactly equal to self-reported life satisfaction – and I don’t – we can’t really say yet. Let’s also keep in mind that money is just one tiny portion of life satisfaction. Long-term relationships and friendships definitely contribute more to your overall satisfaction in life.

The post Can Money Actually Buy Happiness? appeared first on Rational Romantics.

• We continued to mourn with the victims of the senseless Boston bombings.
• Last week, a child died when his parents prayed for him rather than seeking proper medical attention. Adding to the disgust, this was the second time the parents allowed a child to die from a treatable and easily curable illness.
• We learned that China is plundering the planet’s seas, partly in search of fish bladders and shark fins that are said to have health benefits like curing cancer.
• The last rhino in Mozambique was killed by poachers seeking the valuable rhino horns, which some in Asia believe cure cancer or act as aphrodisiacs.
• Some religious extremists will protest the NBA playoffs because one player came out as being gay.

This depressing list could be very, very long. We could also list dozens of stories in this week’s news, thousands of politicians guiding their people without the light of reason, and a million personal lives made slightly less enjoyable by someone’s refusal to apply reason.

We know all too well the consequences of ignoring reason – but we see glimmers of hope, too.

• The President offered a strong endorsement of science, free from political agendas. (Let’s hope action follows)
• A little girl had her windpipe replaced by her own stem cells thanks to scientific advances.
• Scientists found one key to aging in the hypothalamus of mice, paving the way towards potential life extension in humans.

This list of stunning monuments to reason also goes on and on. Science pushes forward, changing the world. Somewhere, reason led someone to recognize their own confirmation bias and admit, “I was wrong.” Millions of people have been treated and vaccinated against diseases that could otherwise kill them.

Join us today in celebrating reason and encouraging its application in politics, religion, and in our personal lives. For the sake of civilization, reason must prevail.

The post It’s National Day of Reason – and We Need It appeared first on Rational Romantics.

A “partial replacement” of lead piping – one way to make your children less intelligent and more violent.

Despite what doomsday pundits might tell you, we’re living in one of the safest periods in history. Crime has been falling steadily since the end of prohibition, homicide is down, and violent crimes are pretty much down across the board. The problem was that no one could really prove why, but there were no shortage of theories. Like any unexplained boon, everyone stepped in to take the credit. The police patted themselves on the back for being tough (and sometimes “brutal”) on crime.  Politicians, economists, and pro-choice advocates took credit for the diminishing violence in America.

During the same period, IQ rates have been rising steadily, much to the bewilderment of psychologists. Students from 2013 taking the 1970 IQ test will score significantly better on the test. The wider the gap, the greater the difference. The phenomenon of rising IQ has been dubbed the Flynn Effect, and it is vexing to psychologists because average intelligence is supposed to stay relatively stable – it’s not supposed to fluctuate wildly over time. It took us millions of years to evolve to this point – there’s no way that almost non-existent evolutionary pressures has created a rise in intelligence in a mere 70 years.  Some suggest that the Flynn Effect is a result of better national education. The most popular hypothesis today is that the environment around us is more intellectually stimulating. All of these hypotheses seem possible, but generally lack a foundation of solid data.

Perhaps because sociologists and criminologists study crime rates, the most commonly accepted causes are explanations that make sociologists comfortable. Similarly, the primary scientists studying rising intelligence are psychologists, and they tend to be most accepting of developmental explanations.

As it turns out, we’ve known that lead lowers IQ and causes changes in the pre-frontal cortex for at least 40 years. Lead poisoning has been linked to cognitive deficiencies in the areas known to control inhibitions. Despite only recently developing the neurological explanation of lead’s toxic function in the brain, the danger of lead has been known for far longer than 40 years. The Greek philosopher and physician Dioscorides said that lead caused the mind to “give way” before 100 AD. Some have claimed that lead may have contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, as they used it heavily in pipes, drinking vessels, and as a wine additive. While impossible to prove, it’s interesting to consider that lead may have been a contributor to the violence of ancient Rome.

Awareness for the hazards of lead surged with the recently piece in Mother Jones by Kevin Drum that suggests that lead may account for up to 90% of America’s crime rates. That claim seemed absolutely crazy to me at first. It seemed absolutely mad that 90% of a complex thing like human crime trends could be explained by a simple little molecule. Researchers like Rick Nevin has shown that our diminished use of lead has caused IQ rates to rebound to their natural level while making us less violent.

Simple lead – what a fascinating and horribly sad potential explanation of two parallel mysteries.

The post How Lead Caused Violence and Lowered IQs appeared first on Rational Romantics.

Our hearts go out to the victims of the senseless school shooting in Newtown. Both my fiancée and I were moved to tears as the sadness and loss sunk in. All we can say to those affected is that we mourn with them.

Many, understandably wanting to prevent future losses, have proposed new laws. If 9/11 taught us anything, though, it’s that hasty legislation like the Patriot Act, passed while emotions were still high, can have devastating long-term consequences. Let’s look at their proposals, and what they might actually accomplish.

Proposal 1: Ban rifles and large magazines

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has made exactly this proposal, stating that she would propose a bill to ”ban the sale, the transfer, the transportation and the possession” of assault weapons and any clip holding more than 10 rounds. Feinstein believes that such legislation will help save lives by making mass murder less efficient.

Will banning assault rifles save lives? The bill Feinstein will propose in January is a slightly modified version of a federal assault rifle ban that was in place from 1994 to 2004. The bills are nearly identical with few exceptions for specific weapons. Looking back at those 10 years, the CDC compiled an in-depth report which evaluated over 50 studies on the issue to assess the efficacy of the ban. That report stated:

“In summary, the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence.”

In other words, we don’t know whether it works, but it certainly wasn’t a big win or a big loss in the “war on violence.” Some studies showed decreases, some showed increases in violence, and others found no effect.

It is at best irresponsible to pass a law on the basis of, “hopefully this will help, but it could make things worse or have no effect.” The concept of restricting freedom with no clear justification or evidence is decidedly anti-freedom. We must speak against the irresponsible notion of legislating guesswork or a senator’s hunch.

Proposal 2: A mental health evaluation should be required to buy a gun.

The man in Connecticut appears to have been mentally ill, as was the shooter in the recent Colorado theater shooting. Some have called for tracking those who have mental illness, others have gone so far as to suggest that anyone who wants to buy a gun should require certification from mental health professionals.

• There is no foolproof evaluation to determine whether someone is mentally healthy, or whether they will be a month from now. Most people can act normal for at least a full hour.
• Certification increases demand on current mental health professionals, limiting the time they can spend treating those who actually need help. There are fewer than 100,000 practicing psychologists in the U.S., and perhaps 109 million people living in households with guns. You do the math.
• Mental health providers will become less effective if they are forced to be the mental health police. If they have to report and/or track patients who are mentally ill, many patients could be less trusting.
• If a psychologist missed something obvious in the certification process, would they then be liable? Liability is always on the minds of healthcare and mental health providers and insurers.

Certification and mental health policing is neither possible nor effective. In the end, such requirements would do more harm to the mentally ill than good.

Proposal 3: Ban guns entirely

Looking at the news in America, nearly every European shouts, “this is why you don’t allow people to own guns.” Following the example of the U.K. and other European countries, one proposed solution is to simply prohibit citizens from owning guns.

Would this work in the United States, though? With hundreds of millions of guns already in circulation, totalitarian force would be necessary to remove them from circulation. As we have seen with the drug trade, prohibition breeds criminal control. If there’s one thing we don’t want, it’s for criminal organizations to be the sole supplier of deadly weaponry.

Let’s imagine that we somehow did manage to remove all firearms from the hands of citizens – cold, dead, or otherwise. What impact would this have on the reduction of violence?

Slate reported that murderers who use guns don’t necessarily kill more people. Those who use guns in their mass murders killed on average of 4.92 people, while those using knives, blunt objects, or hands killed on average 4.52. Again, aside from being impossible, controlling guns might not even be very effective.

The real solution

We need to remove the stigma of seeking mental health care. People need to know that seeking help from counselors and psychologists doesn’t make them weak – it makes them wise. Companies and individuals can also demand health plans that cover mental health.

The solution to violence in America is not more law – it’s more care and concern for those who need help.

Perspective check

Violence in the United States is actually declining. Despite what the doomsday pundits will tell you, things have been getting better for over 15 years! Below are the “intentional homicides” per 100,000 for the US since 1995:

Things are getting better!

If we’re really interested in saving lives, we should focus on preventing war. The violent death rate chart show the disproportional number of deaths caused by war. Notice the spikes and hills which correlate with wars:

If averages are any guide, 40 children and 260 adults have died in car crashes since the time of the shooting. Over 6500 have died from heart attacks and strokes. While less dramatic and less shocking, each one of these lives represents a parent, sibling, friend, or child taken unexpectedly from those who loved them.

Death is a terrible thing, irrespective of cause. Let’s maintain our perspective, and focus our attention on saving the most lives that we can. Let’s think about how we can make travel safer, prevent war, and cure/treat the diseases that take our loved ones quietly every day.

The post Connecticut School Shooting Tragedy: Do We Need More Laws? appeared first on Rational Romantics.

Most of us are familiar with the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that suggests that all men have the right of “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We may be less familiar with the phrase that likely inspired the line; it was written by John Locke:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Locke’s view is that we have a right to life, liberty, property, safety, and the pursuit of happiness. For reasons like taxation, Jefferson, Franklin, and some of the other founding fathers thought it wise to de-emphasize the idea that we have a right to our own property – an unfortunate beginning to the U.S. government’s half-hearted protection of personal property.

Negative vs. Positive Rights

What the Declaration and original Constitution protect are exclusively negative rights – rights that require inaction  These are opposed to positive rights, which require action. The right to enjoy your lunch without someone stealing it is a negative right. If someone claims they have a right to your lunch, they are claiming a positive right. (Wikipedia article)

The justifications for enforcing positive rights are almost always Utilitarian (Wikipedia article) in nature; proponents of positive rights argue that government should do what results in “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” What’s wrong with a government trying to maximize the happiness of its subjects? As it turns out, quite a lot. Despite attempts of modern Utilitarian philosophers, there is no defense for personal rights to be found in any form of Utilitarianism. The Declaration of Utilitarian Independence would read, ”society has the right to determine the fate and value of your Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness.”

Example: Health Care

I had a disagreement with a good friend about public health care. She argued that the “right to life” included proper care, and that healthcare was, therefore, also a right. This interpretation highlights perfectly the difference between the negative right to live and positive right to life.

The negative right to life in the Declaration was quite clearly a reference to being “allowed” to live. The Bill of Rights was constructed to prevent the use of force against individuals, whether lethal or otherwise. It focused primarily on protecting the individual from the government or the masses. The original Bill of Rights was in this regard profoundly anti-Utilitarian and pro-individual rights.

The positive “right” to life is a claim to the time, money, or efforts of someone else. Those who claim a positive right to life assert that they should be cared for at the expense of another person. Such entitlement claims effectively suggest that slavery is OK, as long as a life is at stake. I shudder to think about the positive-right version of the right to pursue happiness.

There is no doubt we could save more lives if we had unlimited resources to do so. Unfortunately, resources are and always will be limited. We cannot force car manufacturers to give everyone crash-resistant vehicles. We cannot order doctors to provide daily checkups for anyone who asks. We could do a lot to save more lives, but where does a claim to life at another’s expense end? More importantly, where is the justification for even starting down this path?

I am absolutely not arguing against giving. Under the right circumstances, a doctor may even have a moral obligation to care for those who he or she can save or help. Just as we do not pass laws against saying unkind things, a moral obligation is not justification enough for legal obligation.

Forcing People to Do Good

Most of us will accept that it would be good to give to the Red Cross. Hopefully, we can also agree that it would be wrong for the Red Cross to send armed groups into the street to forcibly collect donations from the wealthy. Our moral aversion to forced service again illustrates the difference between negative and positive rights.

Now replace the Red Cross with the government, and disaster relief with healthcare. Caring for those who are sick and cannot afford care is a good thing. Forcing people to care for the sick is bad. “Should” does not equal “must”; forcing people to do good is wrong.

Why would we give any weight to the baseless argument that the government can do things that you, I, or the Red Cross cannot?

Government’s Role is Not Partial Slavery

The government that enforces positive rights is nothing more than a partial slave driver, taking from its citizens under the pretense of legitimacy. Despite the best intentions of those demanding compliance, there is no goodness in compelling support from the unwilling.

We do not believe that there are an inherent set of rights endowed by a creator or given by some higher power. We do believe that protecting individual freedom is conducive to our happiness. If freedom from slavery is a good thing, so is a government that allows us freedom from the claims of the majority.

The post On the Role of Government appeared first on Rational Romantics.

We’re a little bit obsessed with research-backed methods of  finding what we call “the good life.” Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw a number of well-respected news organizations and blogs (and Yahoo news) reporting that money can indeed buy happiness! Is it time to edit one of our most pervasive cultural proverbs: “Money doesn’t buy happiness?”

The “news” comes from the research linked to in the headline above. Onetest was excited enough about the findings in the graph below to make it the center of their press angle:

That looks pretty convincing, right? People who made less money in a year were less satisfied with their life. This was apparently all some people needed to ship the news. Let’s just go ahead and crush this conclusion before more people take it seriously. Sorry everyone, but Onetest’s conclusion is premature and misleading for several reasons.

1. Satisfaction and happiness are not the same thing.

We tend to think of happiness as a sliding scale of sorts, with misery on one end, and happiness on the other. We’ve learned, however, that our minds don’t really work that way. Just as the absence of misery is not the fullness of joy(tm), satisfaction with life is not a joyful life. There might not be anything wrong in your life right now, and you might report low levels of misery and dissatisfaction; however, it would take good things in your life to make you happy.  Nancy Etcoff gives an expert’s view on it if I have failed to convince you:

 …And one of the key points in the science of happiness is that happiness and unhappiness are not endpoints of a single continuum. The Freudian model is really one continuum that, as you get less miserable, you get happier. And that isn’t true — when you get less miserable, you get less miserable. And that happiness is a whole other end of the equation.

2. The survey fails to adjust for life events.

It’s very likely that life events were not preventing the respondents from making more money while also creating some dissatisfaction of their own. One study, for example, found that getting married or having children makes people less satisfied with their work. It’s also a lot harder to work the long shifts that some of the higher-earning positions might demand.

I couldn’t tell whether the figures reported were current or historical income figures. Are we counting people who are presently unemployed in the graph above? E.g. if I were making 60k, but only worked 6 of the last 12 months, would I be reported as making 30k? If so, the results are junk – unemployed people are unlikely to be satisfied with their lives.

3. The survey fails to adjust for industry or job-related factors.

It’s entirely possible that low-paying jobs are also, on average, less rewarding. Consider the two charts below, taken from the same report. The first shows average salary by industry.

Now compare that to the chart of satisfaction by industry.

First, where did defense and insurance go on the first chart? And where are human resources and science on the second chart? These omissions make me wary of data manipulation. Second, there are many large  exceptions to the pay-satisfaction rule. Construction, despite being the 3rd best paid, is 12th the satisfaction scale. Those in the environment industry (whatever that means) are the #11 for pay and #4 for satisfaction.

The point is that one cannot conclude that low-paying jobs cause lower satisfaction. It may very well be the case that both low pay and low satisfaction are caused by something not analyzed in the study: factors like a struggling industry or low skill requirements and thus a lack of challenge could – and very well may – cause both low pay and low satisfaction.

4. 2002 grad students from Australia are NOT representative of the world.

While we may generally applaud longitudinal research of this nature, we need to keep in mind that we’re only looking at a very small piece of the puzzle here. Only 8% of the respondents are older than 35.

I don’t even know what to say about how poorly qualified some of these conclusions are.

There are other potential problems, but I don’t know enough about the research to say for sure. What questions were asked, and in what order? If respondents were asked about their income and job repeatedly, and then asked to evaluate satisfaction, it’s very possible that the answers would take work and pay into account more than they would have otherwise.

What the Findings Do Show

What you can say is that “One year of post-grads in Austrailia reported greater life satisfaction when they made about $150,000.” But that’s not nearly as interesting as throwing academic honesty to the world to proclaim, “Money buys happiness!” Their words, not mine.

By the way, this isn’t the first study that has looked at the relationship between money and happiness. In fact, we already knew a hell of a lot about that relationship based on some excellent science, which makes misleading headlines from a research organization all the more frustrating. I’ll write a more complete analysis of the truths of money and happiness some other time, but Daniel Kahneman sums it up this way:

Clearly, what is happening is money does not buy you experiential happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery, and we can measure that misery very, very clearly.

The post Headlines Report “Money Buys Happiness,” Missing the Point appeared first on Rational Romantics.

People often say the ends don’t justify the means as if it were a truism. Now, they might have good advice and be correct incidentally, but this truism is totally backwards and confounds ethical reasoning. If the ends don’t justify the means, what does? Asking that question is sure to get a blank stare, because most people haven’t thought about this subject in detail. First what are means and ends?

The ends are simply what we want to achieve, like happiness, a loving boyfriend, or a career. The ends are the goods. Means are ways to acquire them. (For simplicity, let us assume these definitions for now.) Here’s what I want to convince you of:

The ends justify the means. They always have and always will. Objections to this statement either 1) call attention to higher ends or 2) appeal to dogma; the first kind is an exception that proves the rule, and the second begs the question.

Let me explain.

1) Let us say you want to be promoted to manager, and it occurs to you that if you report that your manager did something dishonest when he didn’t he’d be fired and you would be next in line for the job. If you were to confess this thought to a friend, she might respond that the ends don’t justify the means. She’s right, incidentally, and here’s why. Lying is a complicated affair. A big lie usually has to be maintained with further distortions. The effort needed to maintain a web of lies is a stressful time waster. Getting caught ruins trusting, worthwhile relationships. Making up for this mark on your reputation takes a long time. Look, we don’t just want a nice job, we want a job with good relationships, no unnecessary stress, and open paths for further opportunity. We want something more than just this job.

I said earlier that objections to ends justifying means call attention to higher ends. A fully fulfilling job is a higher end than a job with merely a higher pay. If getting the job by lying makes the higher end impossible, that end doesn’t justify that means. But the higher end is why, and that higher end justifies honesty. That is why it is an exception that proves the rule. Our ends aren’t all equally important.

2) Let’s say that you are in chronic pain and wish to take some powerful drug to reduce it. Your friend says that’s wrong, the ends don’t justify the means, and taking drugs is simply wrong. You ask her Why? After all the drug isn’t harmful and isn’t addictive. She says even so taking drugs is immoral. Notice that any answer would be an appeal to higher ends, which we covered before. She has no better answer.

This is an example of a dogma, or rule that is accepted without good reason. Dogma doesn’t answer to why questions, and this is what I mean by begging the question. If there’s no good reason to obey a rule, don’t let it get in the way of your happiness.

There. I believe I’ve proved my point. But you might have noticed I’ve said people might be incidentally correct when they say the ends don’t justify the means. More correctly this end doesn’t justify this means. So you might say my point is trivially true. So what’s the big deal?

When we internalize this formulation, the ends justify the means, two things happen. First we start introspecting about the dynamic relationship among our ends. The more thoroughly we consider our ends, we will discover hierarchies that will point to our greatest ends. This end helps that end, which helps that end, and so on. If buying a house ties you to an unfulfilling job, you need to recognize which is more important, a satisfying job or a house. That importance is an appeal to a greater end, like being able to seek better opportunities or coming home unperturbed when you see your family. These ends serve a very abstract end of living a happy life. This introspection will clarify decisions and you will gain practical wisdom. Second, when you meditate upon and shape your hierarchy of needs, this deep reflection will allow you to come to decisions with confidence. You will make decisions grasping the essential details and why. You will have greater moral courage.

Again, internalizing the true relationship of ends and means helps you to own your decisions and have greater efficacy. Making the right decision, making it with confidence, and enjoying the fruits of that right decision are all essential aspects of a satisfying, fulfilling life. This is what Rational Romantics are all about.

The post If the Means Don’t Justify the Ends, What Does? appeared first on Rational Romantics.

One of my favorite questions is, “what makes something right or wrong?” It seems like a simple question, but as you continue to ask “why?” things become increasingly abstract and complicated. Whether you’re talking to a professor of philosophy or someone who might not be sober on the 15, all parties can quickly find the discussion difficult to manage. Comedian Louis C.K. describes the complex spiral that increasingly-abstract “whys” can lead to:

We’re still working on reasoning our way out of David Hume’s observation that no matter how much you know, you cannot talk about what a person “should” do. He wrote the following, probably after trying to explain to one of his nephews why he should eat his vegetables:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.”

Basically, Hume challenged every moral philosopher before or since to show him how to jump from talking about what is true to what we ought to do. Skeptics (the kind with a capital S) say that you can talk all you want about the impact of a given action, but you can’t make the leap to prescribing any action as something one should or should not do.

All of us, hopefully, would say that it would be wrong to punch the innocent baby.

It’s easiest to explain Hume’s observation, known as the is-ought problem, through examples. Let’s take a very simple situation that most people would agree on. Let’s suppose a Skeptic asks you whether it is ethical to punch a stranger’s sleeping baby in the face in the middle of a supermarket - yes, a full fist right in the face of innocence. All of us, hopefully, would say that it would be wrong to punch the innocent baby. If you were speaking with Hume, the following conversation might ensue:

Us: It would be wrong to punch the baby in the face.
Hume’s advocate: Why?
Us: Because the baby did nothing to you. The baby is innocent.
Hume’s advocate: Why does that matter?
Us: (With a look of shock) Because it is wrong to hurt people, especially innocent people.
Hume’s advocate: (Calmly) Why?
Us: Because hurting innocent people is bad.
Hume’s advocate: Why?

I would love to read your answers in the comments, but already the Skeptic’s reasoning has us divided. Some would say hurting innocent people is bad because god says so, others because it’s not in our rational self-interest, and others would say because pleasure and pain are all that matter. If you want to play the game, Hume’s advocate will keep asking “why,” probably until you are reduced to snapping, “it just is! Now eat your damn fries!”

Why the Skeptics’ Arguments Don’t Matter

Asking “why” to infinity is, in reality, a cheap trick in logic applied to ethics. Hume is right that you can’t come to a final answer unless you resort to circular reasoning or poor logic. Does that mean that we are being illogical every time we apply words like “should, ought,” and “had better”? I think not.

Imagine now that your doctor tells you that you have a life-threatening bacterial infection for which there is a cure. He then tells you that he could not prescribe a cure, because nothing in the universe can prove that your living is better than your dying. Does Dr. Skeptic have a place in the real world? The doctor would have his license revoked, and you would seek a doctor who cares that you live.

The fact that no outcome is preferable to the universe is not relevant to our moral decisions. What we want and feel is real, and it matters to us. We have preferences to how things turn out, and in the psychologically healthy individual those preferences are towards end states that will keep us alive and bring us joy.

The Skeptics are right, but we are right to continue ignoring them. You cannot tell someone that they should want to live or be happy – but we can almost always agree on these as desirable outcome.  Even if that goal is as general as happiness itself, suddenly “should” makes sense again. With a shared goal in mind, we can reasonably talk about the  most efficient and effective way to achieve that goal. For example, “if you want to be happy, you should not punch an innocent baby.” That’s a statement that even Hume should be able to agree with.

We often assume a common goal – or “desirable end state” if you prefer – and we’re usually right. It’s usually safe to assume that people want to be happy, and that they would rather live and be healthy. I hope the lovers of formal logic will forgive me if, for the sake of simplicity, I leave off the clarifying if-then statement. When I say you should seek friendship and love, I am assuming that you would enjoy the happy outcome of doing so.

My goal, and the goal of the Rational Romantic movement, is real and sustainable happiness. If you do not seek or want happiness, you can safely ignore my statements that include the words “should” or “ought” as not applicable to you. If you do want to be live and be happy, then I hope you will find use in what we have to say in the coming months.

The post Why the “Is-Ought Problem” is Not a Problem appeared first on Rational Romantics.

“Turning to religion to find happiness is like using a dim, flickering candle to see while ignoring the light switch of science.”

Religious leaders often point out that religious activity is positively associated with member happiness. This is actually true, at least in the United States – several studies show that Christians are slightly better off psychologically than the rest of the population. For example, this meta-analysis of nearly 150 studies found that religious people are slightly less likely to go through depression. I once listened to a devout Christian express their interpretation of similar studies like this:

“By their fruits ye shall know them. If a teaching is good, then it will have a positive impact on the lives of those who live it. We know Christianity is good because its members are happier. They are happier because they have the peace of God and he blesses them with his spirit.”

“By their fruits ye shall know them,” is a reference to Matthew 7 towards the end of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (which actually contains some priceless wisdom). Pastor Robert Furrow put it this way:

Each of us has a desire to know God and that is the only way to gain fulfillment. If other things are the main pursuit, then we will end up feeling empty. Seeking God is the only way to find true and lasting joy and contentment. [Emphasis added]

As a movement focused on happiness, should we accept these arguments and prescribe religion? The suggestion that we should all be religious because religious people are happier troubles me.

The mental state of a believer does not determine truth.

Certainly most believers don’t claim that being happier makes something true, and I don’t mean to misrepresent them. It’s worth pointing out, though, that we should be most doubtful of those who have no doubt. The moment nothing will change your mind, you have become a poor judge of truth. The idea that you can know truth based on whether it makes you feel good isn’t new, but it’s also not very convincing or rational. A delusional mental patient may be very happy in his delusion, but that says nothing for the truth of his delusions.

George Bernard Shaw put it this way: “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

Is religion the only way to achieve happiness? The best way?

Pastor Furrow is not alone in thinking that their religion is the only path to happiness. Some will tell you “to be happy, remember that the only way to real happiness is to live the gospel.” That’s from the official Mormon stance on happiness. I’m not so sure.

There are thousands of religions with incompatible doctrines. The Mormon, Catholic, and Baptist Gods and doctrines differ wildly, and their suggested path for finding happiness varies accordingly. So how can you determine the actual path to happiness when you have thousands of people telling you different things? You could live each one – but you couldn’t live it halfheartedly. You would have to fully live and believe the doctrines of each church, and then objectively compare. Obviously, living in full devotion to a different belief each day is impossible.

Instead, we must apply science to see what about religion was actually making people happy. You could then take that, combine it with everything else science has taught us, and actually work towards making people happier rather than holier. Religion is not designed to make people happy; happiness in this life is not its goal. If happiness is our goal, we should seek it actively rather than by correlation. When the science of happiness contradicts the official church doctrine directly, religion is, at worst, a direct opponent of happiness, and, at best, an incidental ally.

Turning to religion to find happiness is like using a dim, flickering candle to see while ignoring the light switch of science.

The post Religion: a Poor Way to Find Happiness appeared first on Rational Romantics.

The data presented below are based on our review of every scientific study on the health effects of coffee that we could get our hands on – scroll to the end for citations. We also ran our own survey to see what Americans thought about the health of coffee, and the results may surprise you:

The Health Effects of Coffee

You can make your coffee drinking even healthier in three ways:

Always use a paper filter.
Paper filters remove harmful chemicals like cafesterol and kahweol, which increase cholesterol.^[1]

Drink coffee cooler than 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 Celsius).
Drinking very hot liquids increases the risk of throat cancer.^[2]

Eat some food, but eat mineral-rich foods without coffee.
Coffee blocks the absorption of minerals like iron^[3] [4], calcium^[5], zinc^[6], and magnesium^[7]. Drinking coffee with some food may help with pancreatic and other cancers.^[8]

The Survey

We were surprised at how good coffee seemed to be for health, and began to wonder if people in America thought coffee was good or bad for health. We asked about 1,200 Americans a simple question: if I were to drink three cups of coffee per day (the national average) would it be beneficial to my health, detrimental to my health, or have no impact on my health?

Interesting. Despite the generally positive effects that coffee has on health and overall mortality, more people think coffee is detrimental to their health than beneficial, and most people think it just doesn’t do anything. There were some interesting findings: people in the northeastern United States, for example, were far more likely to think coffee is bad for them. We then compared the age of the survey participants, and found that the younger you are, the more likely you are to believe that coffee is bad for you.

We can’t really say why, but older people on average seem to think drinking three cups of coffee is a good idea. Perhaps older people are more aware of the cognitive benefits of coffee. Maybe it’s a generational culture difference, or maybe people born in the 50s are just wise. For those wanting more than a summary, here are the health effects of coffee, complete with sources and details.

The post Is Coffee Actually Bad for You? appeared first on Rational Romantics.