March 18th, 2016, 3:38 pm
QuoteOriginally posted by: tagomaQuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaQuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnAnd suicide rates are probably better indicator of happiness than some skewed Northern European centred think tank. "happiness" is a Western concept and may not translate to other cultures where the "group" is the social unit.So, all these results are BS IMO.Ex. Finland is #5 happy and #26 suicidal. Can you explain. Ireland#19, #59NL#7, #87No, they are different. Suicide rates reflect the (un)happiness of a minuscule fraction of the population.In fact, societal happiness may be anti-correlated with suicide -- if the unhappy people kill themselves, then the average happiness of the remaining population increases!To counter-argue T4A - Say J.Bieber commits suicide because he was unhappy (eg he couldn't make it with K.Kardashian). This tragedy would probably result in unhappiness in the blieber population that one can argue could be higher than J.Bieber unhappiness.(here, we don't consider whether K.Kardashian is a blieber, her weight (!) in the population, etc... just to keep things simple)Excellent point! It's true that suicide decrements the number of deeply unhappy people by only 1 but induces some incremental unhappiness in N people close to the suicidal person. Yet those friends and family of the suicidee also suffered some incremental unhappiness from the depression and problems of the suicidee before their death.The unhappiness among friends and family that is induced by a suicide decays over time. The unhappiness among friends and family that is induced by a seriously depressed person who continues to live will only accumulate (and spread as the depressed person makes others around them depressed, too). Thus, each suicide induces a transient uptick in unhappiness but a long-term increase in happiness.