Cito di Pense wrote:Being well-informed does not necessarily lead to happiness, as getting a cancer diagnosis illustrates.
But getting an early diagnosis arguably can lead to better wellbeing.
You may say 'touche' now.

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Cito di Pense wrote:Being well-informed does not necessarily lead to happiness, as getting a cancer diagnosis illustrates.
Cito di Pense wrote:It can lead to better well-being, but it does not lead right away to happiness, because chemo and radiation therapy are a bitch.
Cito di Pense wrote:I thought we were only dealing with happiness as a measure of well-being. If not, then life expectancy sometimes suffices.
Cito di Pense wrote:Genetics and neuroscience? That's like comparing football and baseball.
Cito di Pense wrote:
Of course. We can qualify the fuck out of it. That's what wibbling is all about. We can't really talk about happiness in detail, then. Well, we can, but somebody's going to complain about the inevitable complexity.
Cito di Pense wrote:Look: I absolutely agree that (ideally) we can figure all this out. I know something about how long it takes to figure difficult things out, which doesn't include wibbling about neuroscience and not being a neuroscientist. I can tell you that it's going to take awhile, and we may not have that much fucking time to get all our pencils sharpened and lined up on the desk in length rank.
archibald wrote:Cito di Pense wrote:Look: I absolutely agree that (ideally) we can figure all this out. I know something about how long it takes to figure difficult things out, which doesn't include wibbling about neuroscience and not being a neuroscientist. I can tell you that it's going to take awhile, and we may not have that much fucking time to get all our pencils sharpened and lined up on the desk in length rank.
I can't speed up the process. I'm as stuck in the stewpot as you are. And I only come here because of the fun of chit chatting anyway. I'm not trying to change the world, or even just yours.
archibald wrote:Sam Harris answered by saying that in theory, if one had enough knowledge (via what he called science but which he meant to be empirical reasoning) one could, hypothetically, unpick and analyse both holiday experiences and actually come up with a comparative rating.
Cito di Pense wrote:As I say, in an ideal world, we'd have time to figure this all out. In the meantime, the LHC and NASA are going to keep getting the big bucks. The NHS budget is larger, but it's spread around, and includes people trying to reduce spots on teenagers. If that isn't more happiness, I don't know what is, because, pound for pound, teenagers are happier or unhappier than anyone else. With some of them, a hangnail is a motivation for suicide.
archibald wrote:Cito di Pense wrote:As I say, in an ideal world, we'd have time to figure this all out. In the meantime, the LHC and NASA are going to keep getting the big bucks. The NHS budget is larger, but it's spread around, and includes people trying to reduce spots on teenagers. If that isn't more happiness, I don't know what is, because, pound for pound, teenagers are happier or unhappier than anyone else. With some of them, a hangnail is a motivation for suicide.
True. There is potentially a huge debate to be had over whether we should prioritise finding life on other planets, understanding exactly what happened at the big bang, or eradicating acne.
archibald wrote:surreptitious57 wrote:archibald wrote:
I understand there is an amygdala in each hemisphere
I did not know that there was an amygdala in each hemisphere. I thought there was only one and that it was responsible
for fear and nothing else. I also thought happiness depended upon the levels of serotonin and dopamine within the brain
I am no expert either but I have had this discussion before with someone on another forum and I came away thinking that the idea that the two hemispheres had different roles was largely a myth and even that the brain was modular enough for us to identify specific locations for specific functions was itself overstated and simplistic albeit accurate to a degree
Cito di Pense wrote:I guess I dream in vain of your getting over this hope of figuring it ALL out. But at least I know it's only a dream. If you're just trying to prioritise, best of luck with that. See lining up pencils in length-rank order, because you can see the job of trying to get it right, ethically, in exactly the same light.
surreptitious57 wrote:archibald wrote:surreptitious57 wrote:archibald wrote:
I understand there is an amygdala in each hemisphere
I did not know that there was an amygdala in each hemisphere. I thought there was only one and that it was responsible
for fear and nothing else. I also thought happiness depended upon the levels of serotonin and dopamine within the brain
I am no expert either but I have had this discussion before with someone on another forum and I came away thinking that the idea that the two hemispheres had different roles was largely a myth and even that the brain was modular enough for us to identify specific locations for specific functions was itself overstated and simplistic albeit accurate to a degree
I think the notion of specific functions for the hemispheres that pertains to logic and emotion is generally true rather than
absolutely true. Now other functions are more hemisphere specific. So for example the left hemisphere controls the motor
functions of the right side of the body and vice versa. Also functions such as speech and language. Memory is interesting as
there are two different types : episodic which pertains to images and semantic which pertains to words. But as the brain is
plastic it should not be regarded as entirely modular. The human desire for compartmentalisation I have zero problem with
but the individual regions however do not function in isolation to each other. Anyway from one non expert to another there
is my entirely uninformed opinion about the subject in hand
archibald wrote:The other benefit is joining in on dinner-party conversations and sounding knowledgeable, which is always a nice treat for one's frail ego.
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