Summary:
Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution has just published The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, which seems to be getting a major media push from a bunch of completely uncritical reviewers and commenters, some of whom really should know better. It is not that this book is totally wrong or bad, but that it way overstates its case, cherry picking data and the views of people he has interviewed, with only the slightest of caveats. A typical sophistic argument runs from presuppositions (hidden assumptions) to stated assumptions and then reasoning to conclusions "proving" the presuppositions. Actually, if Aristotle is correct in Nichomachean Ethics, one should get happier as one ages as along as one also gets wiser. For genuine happiness (Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is a
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: happiness
This could be interesting, too:
Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution has just published The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, which seems to be getting a major media push from a bunch of completely uncritical reviewers and commenters, some of whom really should know better. It is not that this book is totally wrong or bad, but that it way overstates its case, cherry picking data and the views of people he has interviewed, with only the slightest of caveats. A typical sophistic argument runs from presuppositions (hidden assumptions) to stated assumptions and then reasoning to conclusions "proving" the presuppositions. Actually, if Aristotle is correct in Nichomachean Ethics, one should get happier as one ages as along as one also gets wiser. For genuine happiness (Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is a
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: happiness
This could be interesting, too:
Sandwichman writes What is Happiness?
Mike Norman writes Tyler Cowen — Which happiness results are robust?
Jodi Beggs writes Causal Friday: Is Change Really A Good Thing, Statistically Speaking?
Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution has just published The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, which seems to be getting a major media push from a bunch of completely uncritical reviewers and commenters, some of whom really should know better. It is not that this book is totally wrong or bad, but that it way overstates its case, cherry picking data and the views of people he has interviewed, with only the slightest of caveats.A typical sophistic argument runs from presuppositions (hidden assumptions) to stated assumptions and then reasoning to conclusions "proving" the presuppositions.
Actually, if Aristotle is correct in Nichomachean Ethics, one should get happier as one ages as along as one also gets wiser. For genuine happiness (Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is a by-product of human excellence (Greek: ἀρετή), where excellence is defined in terms of unfolding one's potential as a human being and an individual. But apparently that is not what the book is about.
Econospeak
The Overhyping of _The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Bettere After 50_
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University
The Overhyping of _The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Bettere After 50_
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University