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Round-up
1. Short list for the Nobel Literature Prize; I am rooting for Orhan Pamuk. Here are Booker Prize odds.
2. TV viewing habits for blacks and whites are converging.
3. How to achieve sustainable gains in happiness: work at happiness-related activities. And maybe winning the lottery helps after all.
4. A journal issue of research inspired by Thomas Schelling.
5. The population of New Orleans is down to 187, 525.
6. Why no Industrial Revolution in China?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 7, 2006 at 08:46 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
The happiness research: I don't buy it. First on purely anecdotal grounds; my experience of junior high was of being a happy person by disposition who was entirely unable to overcome the devastating effects of my environment, so 10% of happiness is environmental effects naturally seems low to me. Of course, as a junior high schooler, I was also pubescent, which is known to mess with emotions; are those 50/10/40 numbers presumed to hold for all ages? and, if not, how do they change, and is that change itself an interesting feature vis-a-vis happiness? Or are the numbers presumed to vary by individual and, if so, how much?
Second, the population they tested their happiness-change theory on was...college students. Again, I question if there are age effects that would make this invalid for the adult population (college students are still finishing adolescence). But more so, college students are all undergoing intense change of a sort (and duration and intensity) not generally faced by adults. College is a tremendously emotional time and it seems like that must confound things. I realize that a grand tradition of psychology is assuming results that hold for psychology undergrads hold for the general population, but I'd be a lot more trusting if they'd looked into the effects of age, or tested a more diverse population.
Posted by: Andromeda at Oct 8, 2006 8:33:06 AM
