Happiness Button (A Parable)

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/happiness_button/

by felixc • 16 years ago

67 21 16 years ago

dilbert.com

_bfhp• 16 years ago

So it's like sorting algorithms? Or...?

greenlblue• 16 years ago

Hilarious and poignant.

karzeem• 16 years ago

I'm with him on this thought experiment all the way up to the last paragraph: "I can't think of any imaginary situation in which long term happiness could come from other people. The best you can hope for is that other people won't thwart your efforts to make yourself happy."

On the contrary. Almost completely, happiness is other people.

zupatol• 16 years ago

Yes, it almost isn't a thought experiment. The only difference is that friendship is not as easy as pressing a button. The button would only work if people you like would press it, and it would have to stay pressed for a while before having any effect. This is enough for many people to be lonely, regardless of any irrational social rules about pressing buttons.

This morning my wife flew back to her country for a 3 week holiday. I suppose I'm going to recover soon but right now I'm still having depressive thoughts.

derefr• 16 years ago

Now imagine that, instead, people couldn't avoid pushing your button—in fact, that the very act of being around other people pushed both your button and theirs. That would be a world where indeed "long term happiness could come from other people."

edo• 16 years ago

With a happiness button on my forehead, I would immediately start doing A/B tests on the conversion rate of 'friends passing by.

shorbaji• 16 years ago

Interesting.

I would imagine the right to pressing button or having your button pressed will be institutionalized,e.g. through a Church or Government. Doing that freely and often - before some sort of permission, license or ceremony - would be stigmatized and possibly outlawed.

jcl• 16 years ago

I could see that happening, particularly because -- as Scott points out -- when you are sitting around being happy, you aren't doing anything particularly productive. Cultures with a particular set of rules regarding button-pushing would be naturally more materially wealthy than those without, although not necessarily as happy.

gaius• 16 years ago

Slightly unrelated: A site that has a "share" button really ought to try and see what their page looks like when posted to Facebook. All I get on FB is the URL, no text exerpt and no icon.

tfh• 16 years ago

is he talking about sex here? Or is it just me...

sp332• 16 years ago

No, he's just using it as a real-world example of how people would react to such behavior (sluttiness).

gn• 16 years ago

He thinks he is talking about sex, but there are some important point he overlooks. Most people would usually want their button pressed by members of the other sex. Most people naturally close to you (parents, siblings, cousins) would be out of the question as pushers of your button.

Also, over millions and millions of years, certain aspects of hominine reproduction (large heads, long gestation times, preposterously long childhood, staggering maternal mortality) and simple statistics would have conspired to make women very, very picky about when and by whom they want to press their buttons. At the same time they would have conspired to make men want their buttons pressed as often as possible, and by pretty much any girl with a neck pulse.

The availability of people of the desired sex willing to press your button would be your default main source of serenity and self-respect. It would take experience and hard work for you to create other sources of fulfillment for yourself. It would be natural for immature, stupid, or bitter people to spend enormous amounts of energy trying to control access to other people's buttons.

If you could press your neighbor's button without risk of adverse side effects (killing months of their productivity, having them lose one of their four of five shots at producing healthy offspring, making them die in childbirth) offering someone to pleasure of a press of their button would be as harmless as offering them the pleasure of a smile, or of a glass of drink. There would be certain rules of etiquette, but there wouldn't usually be much debilitating drama.

nickpp• 16 years ago

Yes, he's talking about sex and it's pretty sad to see how a nerd sees sex. He's missing SO many aspects and simplifying everything to a button. "Engineering" at its finest.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

At first I thought that was the idea, but I honestly can't believe someone so successful at the satire of modern social interaction could so tremendously oversimplify the emotional and biological labyrinth of human sexuality into a mere "button pressing" that instantly makes the recipient "happy."

I think Adams' point is simply that it's not that hard to make someone's day better.

Pistos22• 16 years ago

He puts in the condition that you can't push your own button (or: you can't get the happiness jolt when you do). Contrast that with masturbation.

binarymax• 16 years ago

I also imagine that there would be a huge market for selling fashionable accessories that conceal the happiness button.

Some (most) governments/religions/cultures would create and enforce laws to force you to conceal it.

tgandrews• 16 years ago

I'd just lie with my head on my desk and be satisified with life. But I'm not sure if I'd actually BE happy. I may feel it but it would be rather shallow.

gvb• 16 years ago

Apparently the buttons have Digital Rights Management so that a desk cannot press the button, only digits can.

jerf• 16 years ago

If you want to take the story semi-seriously, it really depends on the definition of "happiness". If it was like an electrical stimulation to certain parts of the brain (colloquially called the "pleasure center" even if that's not accurate), the natural outcome would be pretty much the entire species pairing up and holding each other's buttons until death by dehydration.

As others observe, if this is a metaphor for sex, it is a terrible one. A metaphor useful to the extent it has similarities with the target of the metaphor and this deviates in numerous critical ways that render any resulting "insights" completely irrelevant to the question of sex. Numerous, numerous, numerous.

chegra84• 16 years ago

He is actually talking about warm fuzzy(any sort of affirmation not sex in particular)

The original allegory was written by Claude Steiner.

Here is the original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v683T1GVS1U

if that is annoying read the story here http://www.claudesteiner.com/fuzzy.htm

Pistos22• 16 years ago

I suppose one would not derive deep, meaningful happiness from the button, because the happiness would have a hollow source. Sort of like the difference between the elation of scoring a goal, or the joy of reading a good book, or the merriment had when spending time with long-time friends, versus the high of taking drugs. Enriching fulfilment versus empty thrill.

Happiness Button (A Parable)

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